Pity about the horrible book quality. Your impression of the novel matches my own. Interesting, novel, but somehow bland.

A first edition hardback should be perfect, not smudged. And the telling not showing element does nothing to improve the book either. Such a shame because it sounded like the book had potential.

Yeah I actually was expecting to find that it was a book club edition, so I was really surprised to see it marked as first edition. Whoever does the quality checks at Atria Books should be pink-slipped. It should have never made it out of the printing house.