While I admired the author's ability to emulate the tone of a Victorian author and paint the story's images in my mind, that was unfortunately countered by a lack of characters I cared about and a plot I couldn't buy into. I had the feeling that the only character for whom the author had any compassion was the dog -- in fact I wonder if the author would have preferred to have written an ending where the Brown Leather Man actually succeeded in his final goal.

Other negatives for me: the idea that one man had developed so many different ground-breaking inventions, the general lack of any true science behind any of those inventions and other pseudo-science aspects in the story (in effect making this a fantasy book, not a sci-fi book), and I didn't care for the constant use of long monologues by various characters to explain the plot, making me feel like I was watching a campy B movie.