Opus

Hm: a mix. On the one hand, character's back stories and situations were engaging; the situation created interesting conflict that must be addresses. Clearly the geography of Manhattan had been studied for the late 70's world building. I liked the author's light touch on race because it's a pet peeve when only the non-white characters are named as non-white, but this author did that kind of description really well–context and exposition clues to fill that in, but not heavy handed–and I appreciate it.
Why did I give up at 30%? Because I felt the connection to characters/setting/conflict at 30% that I had reached at 5%. More development of all those domains of storytelling, please! Interactions felt kind of basic/formulaic when I was ready for them to be nuanced and deeper. Similarly the setting felt sketched in rather than fleshed out at that point–soooo much going on in NYC in the late 70's! It was a totally different city thannow! let's get that world-building goin' on, for the love of gritty walk-ups!!–and the back stories felt flimsier the longer they spent being not developed. A few continuity oddities made it hard to follow–like, some action read like it all happened on one day but apparently there were some months in between there that I skipped, and I'm not a careless reader.