Book review: Ombria in Shadow

[tigertoy]

Today's book review is Ombria in Shadow by Patricia A. McKillip.

Actually, this is almost two weeks late; I finished reading the book while I was in Minnesota, and I haven't gotten to writing a review yet, so I'm writing this before I forget the book any more.

This was a confusing story.  It's about a kingdom in the "real world" overlayed by a "shadow world", and it's never really clear either what the shadow world is, who the people in it are, or where the boundaries are.  There are a couple of disturbing hints of time travel, but mostly, the stumbling block is just not quite understanding what's going on.  It's hard to tell how much is metaphor and how much is supposed to be actually happening.  The characters are interesting, and the plot somewhat as well.  And I'm sure that for some people, what I found confusing will be full of rich meaning.  But for me, it didn't entirely work.

It wasn't a bad read.  It was pretty good, but no more.  7 out of 10.

Comments

[daev.livejournal.com]

Pretty much describes every McKillip book I've tried to read.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I remember really liking The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. Only a few years ago, I picked up Song for the Basilisk, which was really wonderful and basically the reason I've bought about 3 more of her books since, none of which have been as good as that one. But this is more confusing than I remember any of the others being.