Yondu Udonto Udonto itibaren Boichagarumaria, Assam, India
Ah, the unfortunately named Athol.
I read this because it was getting huge amounts of buzz on the Other Fantasy board over at wotmania.com and I usually get good tips on new reads over there. Maybe all the hype got me too pumped for it, because I found it to be dissapointing. The structure is very non-linear, and while many seem to think that that kind of non-traditionalism signals great writing, I found that it just repeated itself. I got the feeling that I was just re-reading the same story over and over again, as the book's structure basically made me feel like every important scene was approached from the future backwards and from the past forwards. Its new, its creative, but it gets tiring. I loved the idea behind the main story, with its allusions to ancient mythology (Summerian myth seems to be trendy these days) and its men-as-wizards-as-angels/demons concept, but neither of these ideas ever felt really fleshed out to me. Overall, it had some very interesting components (and I will say that I did enjoy the scenes involving the journey through the Vellum itself with the Book of All Hours), but failed to deliver.