ambyr

Muddy, atmospheric, with intensely conflicted characters and a meandering plot in which they tread, in some cases literally, the same paths again and again. The magical systems have rules, true, but each system has its own rules, often contradictory of the others, and yet they all, somehow, work in a way that feels entirely outside our grasp. The setting of Melusine is a third main character, a shadowed sprawl existing independently and often confoundingly of the plot. The overarching plot, inasmuch as there is one throughout the series, is vague, and yet it doesn't feel as though the author as lost her way, merely as though she's gone somewhere where I can't yet follow.