Right?? That book is just such a trash fire! I've had some of his that I've bounced off because of draggy beginnings, but this is the first one I've seriously disliked overall. DICK FRANCIS WHY. I agree with you about the first-half hero - his interactions with his wife are just so *frustrating*, I appreciate Francis taking the unusual-for-him step of writing a hero whose marriage is falling apart but it just makes both people come across so unlikable in this case. So I was honestly relieved when we switched to William and didn't have to deal with all of his brother's issues - but then William has different frustrating issues! aaaaargh.
(I also have to admit that I kept finding the timeskip more distracting than it would be in a book that wasn't literally about computers, which change hugely every decade. Like ... did we *start out* in Francis's "now" and we've skipped ahead to the early 90s? Or did we start in the 70s and now we're in the 80s? Obviously Francis couldn't know that computers were going to be fantastically different in a decade, but of all the books to have a major timeskip in the middle ...)
Fortunately the others were both much better and this was the one I read in the middle, so it was bookended by far more enjoyable books!
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(I also have to admit that I kept finding the timeskip more distracting than it would be in a book that wasn't literally about computers, which change hugely every decade. Like ... did we *start out* in Francis's "now" and we've skipped ahead to the early 90s? Or did we start in the 70s and now we're in the 80s? Obviously Francis couldn't know that computers were going to be fantastically different in a decade, but of all the books to have a major timeskip in the middle ...)
Fortunately the others were both much better and this was the one I read in the middle, so it was bookended by far more enjoyable books!