City on Fire, by Garth Risk Hallberg

This is clearly an ambitious novel and I dove in with enthusiasm, even trying to figure a way to bring it with me on a trip to the Caribbean. I hadn't yet started using a Kindle. The book is 900 pages long and a brick in weight. I settled for Azimov for my trip instead (Foundation) and found myself the other night looking longingly at Azimov's Foundation and Empire as I struggled down the homestretch of Hallberg's novel. The last 100 pages including the night of the blackout moved like molasses at forty degrees. Perhaps this was me (I?) and the filter through which the book was experienced. Perhaps I tired of the writing style. Or maybe the plot slowed and the musings of the characters and narrator were not enough to sustain me. Maybe I didn't have the energy. Maybe because of the weirdly placed large and rare words sprinkled regularly throughout the text, seemingly incongruent with the words around them? They were not frequent enough to have me keep a dictionary at my side (for example like reading Christopher Hitchens). In many ways I feel similarly about this book as I do about Tartt's Goldfinch - long and well written in places but ponderous at times and ends clunkily.