I'll give y'all my review of Baudolino now: it's a good book. You should read it.

Just kidding. Despite the unfamiliarity of the setting (southern europe c 1200), this is certainly Eco's lightest novel to date, though in his cas that's not saying much. The story does meander a bit, manages to fuse a few different genres (whodunnit coming pretty late in the story), but always provides marvelous descriptions and asides which, for my money, are what make his books worthwhile, though of course in this case I din' actually pay for the book. My readers here may be interested in the fact that quite a bit of the book is about religious variety and heresy (the term "monstrous heretic" certainly now has new meaning to me). If you've read Eco's earlier stuff and wished that he'd stayed lighted and funnier, this may be the book from you. It did, though, lack a certain, umm, (forgive me) gravitas his other novels had. Hope that gives you something to go on. If you read it, feel free to send me your thoughts. Given that it's Eco, I'm sure I missed about half of what he said.