Snow Falling on Cedars is an excellent novel — one well worth reading. It's odd that two of the last three books I've read have dealt with the U.S. government concentration camps for Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II (see also, Prisoner's Dilemma). Snow Falling is well paced and carefully written, but the prose is not at all poetic (the main reason I haven't given the novel top marks). On the plus side, Guterson is not at all pretentious, and his novel is likely to be greatly enjoyable for most readers. It's a slightly dumbed-down Corelli's Mandolin in a number of ways — come to think of it, there are lots of parallels between the two books.

Possible spoiler: My biggest disappointment with Snow Falling on Cedars was that Guterson failed to follow through on a great metaphor. When Kabuo (the accused man) meets with his lawyer for the first time, they play chess, and Guterson takes pains to describe the lawyer's chess playing style (he sacrifices important pieces up front for good board position later on). It was obvious to me that this should be a metaphor for his performance in court, and it wasn't at all.