On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:00:28 -0500, Konrad Gaertner
<kgaertner@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>4-14-08
>Kay Kenyon, _Bright of the Sky_
>Pyr (2007) ISBN: 978-1-59102-541-2
>Score: -2
>
>Start of a series called the Entire and the Rose; the former is a
>parallel universe, the latter is what they call our universe. The
>Entire is a standard elfland: seemingly immortal lords who are
>incapable of creating art, a highly regimented culture designed to
>stifle dissent and creativity, roughly medieval technology except for
>strange specialized organic things (including sentient air****ps),
>telepathic horses, prophetic navigators, and time passing at different
>rates. The book starts with folks from Earth discovering evidence of
>the Entire, indicating that maybe the hero wasn't insane when he
>claimed to have spent a decade there. So they send him back in order
>to secure trade routes, and he agrees in the hope of finding his wife
>and daughter (left behind on his first trip). Of course he ends up
>safely in the Entire (despite the complete lack of thought that went
>into sending him), and everyone he meets quickly sort themselves into
>people who risk everything to help him and his family, or those who
>wish to harm his family. The POV changes without warning (once in the
>middle of a paragraph) to ensure that the reader hears every thought
>and emotion, no matter how trite and obvious. This could have been a
>decent YA fantasy novel, if it weren't for the publisher claiming it's
>adult science fiction.
I'm happy that someone else thought as little of this book as I did!
Sometimes I admit I wonder if I missed something when I thought a book
was weak but it gets widely praised.
(And sometimes I know I didn't -- i.e. I know I was right -- as with
my reaction to Steph Swainston's grossly overrated books.)
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