Instruct: Classify an Amazon review into positive or negative sentiment.
Query: Ultimately unsatisfying

Like everybody else, I have to use the word "gritty" too to describe the realism and the colourful, detailed descriptions of the drug dealers. However, I am siding with the minority here who found the book boring. If a book for you must be more than about character, then I think you will also find this book tedious because the development of the plot is so slow as to be almost irrelevant. The characters are all unappealing and blithely accept the roles in which life has cast them seemingly without benefit of self-reflection or humanity. Maybe that's the way it is but it makes it difficult to empathise or care what happens to them.