To be fair my rather succinct review was fuelled by a few Kronenbergs!
I read Shantaram over the last week. The first half was great: really engaging, well written, created a lovely picture of the sights, sounds and feel of Bombay: terrific. And then....it got bogged down with overly long, pseudo philosophical dialogue, and the author/characters ego and sense of self worth almost drained my will to live. Which did spoil it more than a bit.
A book of two halves.
So perhaps '****' is overly critical, so 5/10. With the first 48% (according to my Kindle) scoring 9/10.
Enjoyed myself over the last day or so reading around the 'what's true, what's not' stuff though.