Dystopian science fiction meets portal fantasy meets British Cold War spy thriller. Sort of. Very complicated, very long, characters not quite compelling enough to carry it (there are, for one thing, far too many of them). Weirdly -- or not weirdly, perhaps -- I ended up finding myself most engaged by the portal fantasy plot: it pops off with the most vivid and humane characters. The whole thing technically comes together, but to me not terribly satisfyingly. However, I did sort of enjoy the long, meandering journey.

I initially picked this up because part of it is set on the Isle of Mull in Scotland. Unfortunately, this turns out to be the dystopian part so you actually get very little Mull content. A D in Mull content, alas.