75% rambling filler, 23% heartfelt story that meaningfully connected past with present, 2% beautifully crafted lines that take your breath away Not a terrible ratio, but was it worth it? I'm not sure

There are some things which you are likely to encounter in a DJO book. There will be music. There will be complex family stuff (stuff: dynamics, relationships, magical legacies). There will probably be a medical professional. Politics will likely play a part. And a ghost. The Book of Lost Saints has all of these, and yet it is an entirely different work from Older's previous. It is a mix of magical realism, urban fantasy, historical fiction, multi-generational family drama. The horror here is not the supernatural kind Older has employed in the past. This time, it's the horror of very real human behavior and history. It may be his best work to date. This is a book that deals with the two ways a revolution can fail, both experienced, sequentially, in Cuba. The first being the revolution that succeeds and becomes a version of what it aimed to topple, and the second being the revolution that flat out fails. It deals with how families (one central family, but also some other tangential families) deal with those historical events. Those who take them on, those who avoid and deny. It's really good. You should read it.