I'm a well read grad student who's bluntly honest about all things, although I try to be most honest about myself.
I still want to get to the meat of the mystery - the creature that lives in Maika and that occasionally is brought out, with disastrously fatal results. This ties to her mother, and others who are on the opposite side of the war from Maika, but again this moves slowly and is hampered - at least for me - by the historical aspect.
I liked it, it just didn't move me the way many of my favorites do.