It was very good. Strangely I haven't been able to get into any of the other Wolfe works I've tried (the Long Sun books, the Soldier books, and the Wizard books). Every time, I find myself enjoying it at first but then losing interest completely once the story goes off on one of Wolfe's signature random diversions, completely dropping all the threads from before. He did this a bit in the New Sun books too, but either it wasn't as bad or the rest of the story was good enough that I didn't mind.