Langan has a nice prose style (despite his consistently using 'insure' instead of 'ensure' throughout), but there really isn't enough story here to make a novel - a novella might be pushing it. The tale within a tale format fails to add anything to the narrative, and in fact leaves us without a first person account of the finale, wherein characters guess at what may have happened - this is clunky to the point of distraction. I've liked all of Langan's short fiction, but for me he has failed to make the leap to novel here.