Yes, that's true-- I have an utter love for books where the secondary characters are as compelling as the main ones (*cough*Bujold), and this didn't really do that. Well. The secondary characters past-time (Ellen Ash springs most prominently to mind) were pretty good.

At the time I read Possession I was still totally in love with the academic world. And I loved grad school. But once I got out of grad school I was ready to get out of academia-- there's a particular sort of person (my advisor was one, which was probably a large part of why I loved grad school) who doesn't get either mildly corrupted or insanely quirky as a result of living the weird academic lifestyle, but they are relatively rare. I wouldn't've lasted another five years. So yeah, if I read it now for the first time I might have a rather different outlook :)