This book is a masterpiece. Brutal and unrelenting, this book grabs you by the throat, chokes off all your air while dragging you down to down stone steps to a shadowy dungeon where it ties you up and inflicts the pain and horror of human greed avarice pride and stupidity on you as the reader foe nearly 900 pages. It's difficult and complex and intricate and wide-ranging in its reach. I am quite sure I'll never read anything quite like it ever again.