Mostly very good. The problem I had with it was that there were several chapters told from a barbarian's veiwpoint and these pieces were all written in thick dialect. This slowed down the pace of the book to a crawl. (The only way he could have made it less enjoyable would be to have the dialect printed in italics.) I skipped every one of these chapters after slogging through the first and felt like I missed very little. There were some great set pieces and inventions in this book and it had some truly funny Kafka-world comedy in it, as well (which I'm a sucker for).