The Ice Curtain, by Robin White

First let me say something about the way I read. I read everything, and often finish uninteresting books with little hope of their improving. But with some hope! But I find it's pretty rare that a book improves on its first half. The Ice Curtain was one I almost didn't get into at all, but due to its being the only paperback I had handy, and not wanting to lug a heavy hardback around, I stuck with it.

I must also admit that I was taken in a little by its cover: a shadowy silhouette of a man surrounded by diamonds. I do, in fact, sometimes choose books by their covers. When you are blindly reaching out for books at the library, it seems a good a way as any, and works as often as it fails, if not more often. Because most books have something good about them, I find. It's pretty rare that I feel a book is an entire waste of time, that I'm angry when I finish it, because I'll never get those 4 hours back (or however many). It's happened, certainly, but I seem to have wiped the authors and titles from my mind. If I think of any, I'll add them in.

Set in Russia and Siberia, and concerning the shadowy world of diamond mining, it was dense and fairly confusing, and just a little exhausting. By the end, I had finally started to to care a little about the main characters, but all in all, it is not one I would recommend, unless you find yourself in a guest room somewhere with no books to read but this one. That sounds harsher than I actually feel, but so it goes.