I had originally given up on the book, but since I got my hands on the author's annotated version, I decided to give it another chance. The annotations are actually very helpful, as they explain many open questions and the author's intentions, such as my criticism of the unnecessarily long time jumps or the off-screen deaths of popular characters. All in all, the story was okay. There were again many extremely long time jumps, but it was manageable. It was exciting enough, but nothing unpredictable. I still can't give it 5 stars, though, because I think the MC‘s motivation is portrayed too weakly in my opinion and comes across as rather flat.