I have mixed feelings about this one. I’ve been a fan of Ellen Kushner’s Sound and Spirit for years now, and I had high hopes that I’d enjoy her written work as much as I enjoy her PRI program. And I did enjoy this book for the most part, but it fell short in the end.

I won’t — because it’s just not possible — go into the plot here. I tried to come up with a neat and tidy summary, and I just can’t. There’s so many characters — one of the flaws for me; I just couldn’t keep everyone straight — and there’s so much going on. That’s actually one of the things that appealed to me. I liked that this book was a long and involved chess game, people maneuvering other people around to their advantage; characters falling into (and sometimes out of) traps delicately laid for them. I liked the intrigue — there’s one character that you’re left in suspense of for a good portion of the book: who was he, how did he end up where he did, why does he have a death wish? — and the action was well-written. Actually, that’s one thing I can say I really enjoyed: Kusher’s as good a writer as I hoped: descriptive, but not too flowery (well, mostly), and she sketches out characters and situations that were interesting and fun to read.

But….

She fell short with the end. I’m not sure it could have ended any other way, but I felt as if I were watching a game of chess, and then at the end, everyone got up and said “Oh wait! It’s Parcheesi, not chess, that we’re playing.” I was left with a big Huh. Too many threads that she wove were left hanging, and the ending was much too pat for what had been set up during the course of the novel. If only… I don’t know what. I do know that there were several short stories set in the world (which reminds me: this is only fantasy because it’s not historical or contemporary fiction; it has very few of the hallmarks of what I usually consider Fantasy…) and I tried to read them. And either Kushner isn’t a great short-story writer (which she readily admits), or I just wasn’t all that interested in the end.

I’m still trying to make up my mind whether or not to venture into the other two books. Maybe I’ll like them better… or maybe they’ll end up with the same flaws that doomed this one. But then, I won’t know until I read them, will I?