Instruct: Classify a review into positive or negative sentiment.
Query: Slow and steady does not win the race with this novel

I could not wait for this book to arrive and was very disappointed once it did. The author brings in more characters than is necessary and describes their entire personal history. Though the description of the book states that it is about a flooding of a town in 1889, this vital event does not occur until page 240 (there are only 258 pages in the book). In fact, the flood is only described for seven pages before the narration is projected into 1917. Therefore, there is little room for any resolution to these characters that the author has so painstakingly described. In addition, the introduction of the characters seemed contrived and almost appeared as character sketches as opposed to three dimensional people. Possibly more upsetting, is the fact that there is potential in this novel to be an epic in historical fiction. However, in its current state, it falls short.