In truth, 2.5/5.
I am terribly fond of stories that take me not only to times long gone, but also to far off places where I have never been. I bought this book under the impression that it would be similar to those written by Sarah Lark and her Landscape novels set in New Zealand and Jamaica. I that sense the story did not let me down, switching back and forth between turn-of-the-century San Francisco and the indomitable wilderness of untouched Alaska. However, there rest of the elements left me quite unsatisfied.
First: the story, as a whole, is quite convoluted and, in a sense, boring as it spirals from one dramatic situation to another, always repeating its same formula.
Second of all, considering that this is a 730 page book which deals with a great number of characters at the same time, I would have expected them to be well developed, but even the main characters are sometimes lacking in personality and often redundant. With all the elements it possessed, this story had the potential to be a family saga similar to Colleen Mccullough's "The Thorn Birds", but is instead shallow and has some very odd transitions, which sometimes confused me to the point of wondering if my book was not missing a page. It does not sweep you in and out of the passing lives of the characters, but slams you right smack when "something" important is going to happen.
Third, and this is for all those who are reading it in Spanish, I had a difficult time with the translation of the book. It's not that I did not understand the words, but I did find it inconsistent and it made me cringe at times at the terms used, for though they were not incorrectly used per se, the language seemed unnatural and even included some colloquial terms that weren't in accordance to the historical context of the story. It almost seemed to be as though a) several people translated the book, each one using the terms they preferred and b) when in doubt, they simply used google translate instead of attempting to find the voice of the author.
Also, I have never in my whole life read a book with so many "hey"s used to start a conversation, which only tells me that either this is shoddy writing or the author tried to convey a sense of "americanism" which, due to the setting, is completely out of place.