All the Time in the World

The opening segment of this book was SO densely phrased - snippets like "The earth was soaked in light, puddled silver by the storm, an eldritch light meant for the eyes of foxes, as hard as a welding spark" and "...he stood motionless in the top field, which wrapped itself over the brow of the hill like a grass handkerchief on a bald man's head" - my initial reaction was "there's no way the entire book can go on like this - it's too affected." But once the story got going, the writing became much more "normal" - and that initial, almost poetic introduction gave the main characters a mythic quality, like they were all fated to be brought together in this situation. In any case, I ended up really liking the characters - it's difficult to write a character who is hugely flawed and still manage to make them appealing, and all too often I also see characters that are so good they're hardly human. Long does a pretty good job (with a few understandable exceptions) of finding a realistic balance.