This is not a good book. This is at most a 400 page story (and a notably shallow story at that) bolstered by 800 pages of the same speech repeated over and over again, and the more I heard this speech the less convinced of it I became.
While patently idealistic, Ayn Rand still has a place on my bookshelf because it's idealism at its persuasive best. Yes, I'd like to be as unbending, but no, I don't think I'll ever choose to be.
Really long and really slow, but really worth it. I might read it again but not for many years. It took me 3 months to finish this (i took Harry Potter breaks between each third)