Recent review debates concerning this book make me want to come back here with some better analysis and explanation of my low rating, but I read it so long ago, and have little actual interest in revisiting it. Though I read this long enough ago to be pretty uncritically caught up in the adventure story aspects, I remember being underwhelmed in general, then annoyed by how it was weighed down by all the ham-handed philosophical framing, clumsy allegorizing, broadcasting of its messages in billboards that inevitably pushed me away from it. This is part of my basis for thinking that the Man Booker prize is terrible, by the way. See also: Vernon God Little.