Never let it be said that I’m a stubborn man.  Well, okay, no, not that so much, but only a short while ago I was owning up to the shame that I’d probably never read this book and yet here I am — following reassurances from no less authorities than Nick Fuller and TomCat — reviewing, and so presumably having read, it.  Here’s the heart-in-my-hands moment: Crispin wrote 4½ great books, then a terrible one, then this one, then another terrible one, and this was the only one I’d not read.  But it’s bracketed by two books so awful that I’d wipe them out of existence, so my fears were, I feel, well-founded.  And you want to know what I thought, right?  Were my reservations borne out?  Who was right?  Ohmygod the tension…well, let’s get into it.

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