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This is my first Kushner book and likely my last. The writing is lovely, but the storytelling is a big miss for me.

I found this one to be a real slog, and this is coming from someone who generally likes slow moving plots. There’s a lot of waiting around for something to happen, but the story just never gets around to seeing that through. It’s not really a spy novel despite being billed as such, though to Kushner’s credit it’s a lot closer to what a real world spy actually does. Still, there’s a reason why most spy novels don’t typically strive for that level of realism.

I also thought the setting felt confused, as though the author couldn’t commit to locating this either firmly in our reality or somewhere more akin to a hypothetical reality that *could* exist.

I perked up a bit during the parts where Kushner is giving us anthropological tidbits or when she’s just kind of riffing (again, the writing here isn’t the problem), but the story just never gets to any place that feels satisfying.

*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*