...more I sheepishly admit that upon seeing the title and the praise without reading anything about the description, I thought that this would be some sort of science fiction epic. I was understandably disappointed within the first few pages when I realized that it was not science but historical fiction. That said, the story was more engrossing than a lot of sci-fi I have read, with interesting characters and events. For various reasons, I couldn't put it down and finished all five hundred and some-odd pages in about a week. I'm curious as to how much of the book is fact -- for example, which of the characters besides the Counselor and some of the military officers were real people -- and I'm strongly considering reading the journalistic account of the War of Canudos, Rebellion in the Backlands . I sort of hope that some of these characters (Galileo Gall, Abbot Joao, the Lion of Natuba, the Little Blessed One, Maria Quadrado) have some basis in reality, but I'm not holding my breath. The only books I've read in the last 2 years that have been as engaging as this were Homage to Catalonia , For Whom the Bell Tolls , Seeing and Blindness , in that order. I guess it says more about me than anything else that the first two are war stories and the second two are by Saramago. Now that I think of it, all five of the books have in common their treatment of mass