This book, about a planeload of passengers caught up in an anomalous event, took forever to get started. I swear the entire first half of the book was taken up in introducing a large variety of characters, each so different that it felt almost as if they were starring in a different style of book: the noir contract killer, the entertainment mag pop star, the family of a hair-trigger veteran, the depressed author, the couple growing apart, etc, etc; none of these had anything to do with the others except that they had all been on the same plane, and eventually FBI or Interpol or someone shows up to collect them. The second half segues into what happens with that plane, and how the event changes each of the lives of the passengers. It felt less like a novel than a philosophical thought experiment; even though Le Tellier did a good job bringing life to each of the characters, there were so very many of them that you really didn’t grow to care about any of them in particular.