by Khaled Hosseini  Reviewer Rating:   My harsh rating for
Khaled Hosseini's newest book is partly due to the book itself
and partly due to the high expectations he's laden us all with,
so this book left me sadder than the same book by a different
author would have.  After swooning over the Kite Runner and A
Thousand Splendid Suns, I was prepared for a sweeping, heart-
wrenching, and beautiful next novel, but I would say And the
Mountains Echoed wasn't any of those.   In contrast to his other
books, Hosseini tries to expand from one story focused on a
couple characters to a complex web of people that reminded me of
that movie "Babel" with Brad Pitt where there are multiple
stories going on and when you eventually find out how they're
all connected, the connections are not interesting, surprising
or imperative to the story. So you have several stories about
rather un-likeable characters, set mostly in modern-day. Let's
face it: most of us read Kite Runner because Afghanistan was
painted as so culturally rich an