I made it almost halfway through.

Ugh.

I have to agree with Brandon, who says that she does characters poorly. She does. Or she does them too well: they are too much of whatever it is she wants them to be. They are only that one thing, to an extreme. They are not characters but person-shaped characterizations, symbols of ideals embodied to carry the plot along in a way that aligns with her philosophy… which makes this little Roark quote quite the ironic gem:

“I don’t wish to be the symbol of anything. I’m only myself.”

That’s enough of that.