I love John M Ford’s writing. He has a distinctive style, especially in his earlier novels, of telling stories from multiple people’s viewpoints. He takes each individual’s story and wraps the whole narrative together, often skipping large amounts of time and leaving the reader to piece together what happened.
This can be a very successful and rewarding (for the reader) style. Not so much in The Dragon Waiting. I had a hard time figuring out some of the background or understanding why I cared about the outcome. Not one I’ll be recommending (unlike The Last Hot Time which is fabulous).