I feel like giving Dark Star four stars instead of five is like critics hating things just because they aren't smart enough to understand everything. In other words, I sometimes got lost in the shadows of Furst's espionage tale. I loved the book, but felt a little uninformed sometimes. I'd like to think it's Furst's fault, but it's also highly likely that his detail was so subtle that I missed key clues and plot elements. That said, I really enjoyed my second Night Soldiers tale. It's everything I ask for in a spy novel: intrigue, betrayal, a little love, and, most importantly, a rich tableaux of setting and background characters that makes the story seem true enough to have actually happened.