ambyr

This is the book that I wanted Deathless to be. It has just the right mix of magic and mundane, of achingly familiar and convincingly alien. And I love the way the character react to learning about the secret, hidden world: not with fear, not with joy, but with resignation. Of course there's another world beneath ours, of course there is, and why would it be any better (or any worse)?

It's not a perfect book. The stories (each chapter is more or less its own story) interlock and flow smoothly, but they don't build; the book is never more than the sum of its parts. That's not exactly criticism. The parts were good. I'm just left a little wistful that they never quite combined to reach "great."