PanThe Washington Independent Review of Books[Picoult] is so intent on presenting every aspect of the topic that her characters become subservient to that goal ... inconsistencies for the sake of loading racial information onto [Ruth's] character make it difficult to get a true emotional fix ... Some readers will keep going because there is so much to be outraged over, or they will be fascinated by the many, many birth scenes, or they will be shocked by the quick glimpses of skinhead wilding and the white-supremacist network. But this is a long book with many technical issues. It bogs down in repetitions and flat scenes that are not well edited.
