Do not read this without also reading ‘The Climb’.

I was hooked from the start. A dark and beautiful portrait of an extremely dysfunctional family.

This book hits the ground running and never stops. If you enjoy rpg/D & D style games this will be a blast for you.

It's especially amazing when a book can break your heart subtly. Beautiful writing, sad, beautiful story.

If only the author had skipped over the never-ending passages of mind numbing bureaucracy and personal philosophy this novel would genuinely be a masterpiece. The depth of the history within combined with the narrator’s being clearly traumatized by and desensitized to the horrors going on around him and sometimes enacted by him truly captures what it actually may have been like to be a semi-high ranking member of the SS, which is a perspective rarely shown (for good reason). This isn’t sympathetic to the Nazis, but rather highlights the horror of what they did more by showing their humanity. In the end this book was beautifully and brilliantly written, disturbing beyond measure, and far, far too long. I will never read it again but I’m glad I did.

I really hate criticizing authors period, let alone those who clearly have boatloads of talent, but my God this was difficult to finish. It was desperately bleak and even more boring. How a topic this intriguing and taboo could be turned into a torturous slog I have no idea but it has been achieved here. The writing is truly beautiful, but that somehow only makes the tedium of this story more insulting. I'm sad to say the freedom I feel at being finished with this after working at it for months is a far more enjoyable experience than the novel ever was.

The bad news is that the book could have used a bit more trimming as there were a few scenes that seemed only to extend the length of the book without really enhancing it. The good news is that I thought it was wonderful. It is an intimate portrait of one human being's life and all of those who orbit him written with a lightness and wit that really pads the inevitable sad moments. By the end you feel that you're part of Cyril's family. A truly enjoyable read.

Reading this book (the parts I didn’t skip over) I kept expecting something to happen to show me the author hadn’t written it for purely prurient reasons. At no point did that moment come, and I’m completely stunned that a publisher would allow their name to be affixed to what was essentially child pornography. Graphic child pornography. I can’t imagine what was going through the heads of anyone involved in this. I try to find positives in any work I read, and I’ll say that this young woman is a talented writer, I just can’t think of any innocent reason she wasted it writing this filth.

What a beautiful and breathtaking story.

I’d have given this book another half a star if I were able. It was a very good story and worth the read, but it left me feeling as if it were an outline for a much greater and deeper story the author dreamed of writing. Each of the characters could have had so much more depth and development. I felt rushed through the story and felt the whole time as if I were missing out on some great potential atmosphere. This writer is greatly talented and I hope her next book has the soul this one could have had. I know she has it in her.