#bite-sized review

I've said it before and I will continue saying it forever - Patricia McKillip writes the best magic. It is organic and inexplicable, it comes from the stones and the wind, speaks through music and across time, and no one, including most of her characters, knows why it works. I love that. This book is a perfect example of her strange, arbitrary magic. In a side note unrelated to McKillip's gorgeous writing, Kinuko Craft's covers are so beautiful I want to frame them. They evoke McKillip's dreamy style perfectly. They are my favourite covers to any book ever.

As usual Patricia McKillip sets me adrift in a sea of dreaming magic. It's obvious this book was early in her career as a writer, but it's still good. It's a little more opaque than some of her others, and I would have liked slightly more clarity to the plot. I felt a bit lost occasionally. Still, her magic is so beautifully conceived and written that I don't even care.