Outstanding in concept and execution. ( )

http://martlet-blog.blogspot.com/2008... ( )

Excellent fantasy that really owes nothing to Tolkien, although McKillip has been compared with him. Her luminous prose is enthralling, though at times maddening in its ambiguity and vagueness. Still, McKillip writes with her own gentle voice; even when her characters are wreaking unspeakable violence on each other, something of the "hippie girl" comes through.
Like the finest fantasy (Tolkien, early Frank Herbert, Gene Wolfe), McKillip creates her own complete world. Riddle-Master repays careful rereading. A worthy addition to the canon. ( )

This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read! The language reads like poetry in that it is gorgeous and flows. It devles into the different types of love there are and is just amazing! ( )

A bloodless, passionless, incredibly long story. Battles all occur offstage. There is NO sex at all, even in book 3, when our hero and heroine are finally united, and spend LOTS of time alone wandering about. I guess that's because they're noble and they're not married. But the reasoning behind their not getting married is very obtuse. Most of the book is needlessly vague, actually. I suppose this was due to the effect Tolkien had on the young McKillip, but I'm just guessing. In Tolkien, however, when something momentous happens, it's quite clear, and very affecting. In this book, major events occur and are given the same emphasis as anything else that happens. Too much of the time, I read and re-read passages, trying to figure out what had just happened, and had to conclude that there was just not enough information given to understand the events. If you read this book, notice how often a character will begin a sentence that trails off in elipsis.... (yeah, like that) ...and you have no idea what the implied end of sentence is! Too much of the book is like that. If this were a painting, it would have large areas with no paint on it at all, and not enough rough lines showing to indicate what the artist intends to paint in.

This is my first, and possibly last, book by this author. I just barely made it through. ( )