This was a wonderfully constructed book, whose interleaving strands were so deftly connected that all the way through I felt myself on the edge of tears as each new hint revealed a new point of contact between the different plot threads. But somehow, at about the 80% mark, as the plot threads started coming together, the book began to drag. The final culmination of all the storyliness didn't do anything that hadn't already been hinted at. The things that I knew were coming did come, but they came exactly as I expected them to, based on the hints, and somehow that felt like a let-down. 

The problem, as I see it, is that this book is brilliant at evoking stories in their absence, but struggles to evoke them in their presence. The moment when Arthur returns to the Yazidi village and learns that they were massacred in his absence, was incredibly effective. Actually *seeing* Isis massacre the Yazidis in 2014 on the page, was not. Watching Narin's treatment in captivity to Isis made me feel nothing; but learning that she had been there for *four years* before being rescued evoked so much more horror off-page than anything that happened to her in the text. Learning about the connections between Narin's family lore and Arthur's quest, and the links between Arthur and Leila, right down to the revelation that Leila's grave is positioned so that she can watch over him in the cemetary, was beautiful. Seeing Arthur meet Leila on the page was a complete snoozefest. 

So: this is a remarkable book, with an exquisite structure, but somehow it didn't quite land the way its premise set it up to do. And that is quite a pity; I was all prepared to rave about it up until I realized that I wasn't.