Gillian Polack

I feel that this is one of those books that I will come back to and appreciate something new in it each time. On the first read-through, the one I have just completed, I felt most drawn to Rhonda's story. I felt an affinity with her, and I spent most of the book sure that it would turn out that all her online friends would be other screennames of her own. The fact that they didn't speaks to Gillian's ability to challenge her readers' expectations, and it's only one example of how she does.

I really liked how matter-of-fact the usage of magic was throughout the book. It went so well with how matter-of-fact everything was: there wasn't a whole lot of infodumping about the characters' backstories; everything just came out organically. It seems like that's something basic that any book should provide, but unlike some books I've read I never had a sense of frustration that I didn't know enough about the characters to understand what was going on.

There is just so much gentle wisdom in this book that I know I'll be rereading it more than once.… (mere)

There are some really interesting ideas in this story -- about fantasy places, and how we inhabit them vs our 'real' lives. And I liked bits of it. But for some reason it didn't all gel into an enjoyable whole. I think that I was missing some aspect of it, reading from the wrong viewpoint. I really didn't understand what the ending did, or how it worked.

It didn't help that I didn't particularly like any of the characters, because that is often the most important part of a story for me. I can enjoy and understand a story where I don't get the characters, but there has to be something else to fill that space in.… (mere)