Instruct: Classify Amazon reviews into positive or negative sentiment
Query: Flat

A lyrically written book, with I feel, no great substance (and not much humour either). The characters (four of them) are not very convincing. How this book could be compared to `All Quiet on the Western Front' is beyond me as they are entirely different stories (this was cited in one of the comments in my edition). The author skips endlessly from one time sequence to another time sequence - as if he cannot hold a thought for more than a few pages. This out of sequence style strikes me as contrived. There are nice sentences thrown together but little cohesion.At the end the author lists his sources. It is as if he read the sources and used these to try to inspire a novel - about deserts and dismantling bombs.