Before the Fall

Very uneven. The opening chapter or two were great hooks, and most of the chapters from Scott's point of view were pretty entertaining. However, most of the rest of them, especially since you could tell early on that you were just going to get this one chapter about a character and never see them again, were a slog. Fortunately, the alternation did keep the book interesting enough for me to carry on (as well as the "what happened to the plane?" question).
Sadly the book was plagued by technical problems - tense switched between chapters (or within chapters) for no good reason, as did points of view, forcing the reader to reread passages to figure out who said what or when something happened.

Also, everyone was oddly introspective, even the "no-nonsense engineer" who was mostly introspecting about how, as an engineer, he's incapable of creating or appreciating art, or indeed, of introspecting. These moments served to pull me out of the story.