It's more that he spent the first 75 pages or so introducing one new character and location after another (or occasionally introducing them twice while being coy about the "disguise" thing) so it took me that long to figure out wtf was going on and whether or not I cared. And, I mean, the prose is never going to be exactly, um, gripping, in this one.

It took to about page 50 before I even figured out what century it was and what country they were in.

By the time Frederic and Ordener were attempting (and failing, due to general failiness) to duel over the girl I was interested enough to keep going, though.

Also the first scene is in Spiagudry's morgue featuring a bunch of one-off characters we never meet again and detailed descriptions of three drowned corpses (only one of which has been relevant to anything so far) so that didn't help.