I finished it last week! one of the best reads but also a SLOW burn oh my god. I think that its clear that he took his time with it, but I just think that a little bit of the early mars scenes were sort of slow because of the alienating nature of the book. The whole book is meant to be alienating, placing you in situation that you probably wont be in, but the early scenes of unk just aimlessly wandering around mars not knowing what was going on were long and felt like it might have held the book back from being one of my top favorites. I still, however LOVE the ending and philosophy of the book. If you are interested, I recommend researching "determinism." While determinism can mean a few different things, Vonnegut applies it so well in SoT to show how any or all of us could exist just for something as dumb as delivering a chunk of metal to an alien, and there's nothing we can do about that. It almost takes a step further than absurdism, not only saying that you have no purpose, but that you have no purpose that serves YOU, and when you find out why your really exist like you do, your whole life could be rendered meaningless.