a book must earn its 30 hours/670 pages, and this needed to cut an entire timeline and ALSO 200 pages so make of that what you will. an ending i found disrespectful to the protagonist, on top of a modern timeline so vapid and soulless it gave me the bizarre experience of knowing i would DNF half the book while i was really moves by the other half.  very strange reading experience, and it's a shame that so much i loved about it has been so methodically tarnished by the ending. oh well