I'm not sure whether to give this two or three stars. I enjoyed the first part of the novel. It was really interesting and original. The story pulled me in and I thought it was really captivating. I especially liked the part with the river people. From when Desiderio meets the Count though I just stopped enjoying it though and it just felt like I had to plough my way through. I really can't decide how I feel about this novel. A lot of the novel was quite shocking, especially some of what happened with a nine your old child with the river people, although I believe that was Carter's point. By the end of the novel though I felt like that was pretty much all it was shock effect and shock effect after shock effect. After all of it I feel the book was too vulgar, I'm certainly not a prude, but at a certain point it felt like the story had moved to the background and it was just one after the other rape of some kind or other. I'm going to leave it at three stars as the first half of the book was worth it.