The story of Ishmael Wang got real depressing in this book. Add to that the fact that the preferred method of moving the protagonists story along by this author is to kill off major female figures or to subject female characters to horrible treatment and set the protagonist up as the saviour, the whole things just gets tiresome. And on top of that, if you removed the phrase “Miss Arioni” (sp?) from the book it would likely be shorter by several thousand words (because nearly every exchange between Wang and one of the next most present characters involved restating her name EVERY LINE), and this installment of the series was just not that enjoyable.