Osama

My gut feeling - a short story idea unsuccessfully drawn out to novel length.

Initial echoes of Vonnegut meets Auster proved flatteringly deceiving.

By half way through I was truly bored but continued in the hope its early promise would be mirrored by its conclusion.

Alas, no.

I have no real idea what I read nor any desire to figure out why that is so.

Very intriguing. The alternate world Tidhar creates is charming, and the way our world leaks into it... It was really curious to see how the story ends up. There's some proper food for thought here, about the war on terror. World Fantasy Award once again proves that it highlights interesting books.

for the life of me cannot figure out what the author was actually trying to say in all of this