Finished it the other day and I land about dead center on this one. There was much I enjoyed and I would defintely read another novel by this author. But overall, I thought it was weighed down by its own ambitions. It needed more editing and many of the human characters never really took shape -- they seemed more symbols. But the descriptive writing was often effective, I loved the dogs and I'm a cat person and once I got some momentum going, he kept me involved in the story --- that is till we got to the last section, which I really disliked and thought was silly. I hoped for more, but I got alot and enough that I'll be curious to read more by Mr. However-you-spell-his-last-name.