This is really a 2.5 star review, but it gets 3 for being incredibly ambitious and unlike any book I've read in recent memory.

This book was long, but I'm not sure why people focused on that so much in their reviews. I love long, detailed epics, so the length and number of characters weren't problems for me; neither was the somewhat confusing naming for those of us who are not Danish. When you're reading a translated book, you need to expect some cultural differences, including challenging names.

The characters were fascinating, awful people, who made this book feel like a slow-motion car crash I couldn't look away from. I was drawn into the first half of the book by the murder teaser at the beginning and the promise of a broad government conspiracy. I also loved the view into Danish culture and modern, post-war history. However, as the background stories got weirder and the mystery petered out rather than exploded, I lost interest and took a lot longer to finish the second half. There was a lot of promise here, but when I could figure out the main twist hundreds of pages in advance, it was hard to muster enthusiasm. To have the ending chapter be virtually incomprehensible after such a drawn-out conclusion was beyond disappointing. Did anybody understand this??

I also found it incredibly strange that the author's premise seems to be that all adopted children never feel like they belong anywhere and are inherently damaged, unable to have typical relationships. This seems like an old-fashioned trope, and hasn't been my experience at all from knowing many people who were adopted, including several in my own family.