About 1/4 of the way in so far and I give it an 8/10, I'm really enjoying the premise of this book. The exposition of the characters alongside the alternate history that leads to Alaskan Israel, and the shift in culture of Jewish pessimism is both humorous and dark.

Lots of fun rhetoric, perhaps a bit heavy on the figures of speech at times – almost reading like a caricature of a 60s crime noir novel, but more vulgar than what you'd expect from that time plays well. I really enjoy the repetition of "strange time to be a Jew" which is very reminiscent of Vonnegut's "So it goes" in Slaughterhouse 5.

"The coffee machine hawks and spits like a decrepit Jewish policeman after climbing 10 flights of steps"

and

"A sense of doom indistinguishable from peace"

etc. etc.

Middle half of the book is a bit feverish. Characters don't just teleport around Kamchatka per se, but it kind of feels that way. Several setpieces with no beginning, just middle and end, concatenated to one another.

This middle portion is really good if you already enjoy the crime/thriller genre and the world that's been built so far, but if you get your fix from plot development and more mystery unfolding, the middle 175 pages or so are kind of stagnant. Just Landsman stumbling around getting into trouble, being sad about ex-wife, chasing the case he's not supposed to be working on, and getting out of sticky situations.

The revelation / solidification of the overarching conspiracy leading into the final act is very compelling since it blows the top right off of Sitka and broaches contemporary conflicts which is a kind of funny direction to take the book in. ~Even in alternate timeline, Jews and Arabs will fight over Palestine.

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