As much as it pains me to say this, given how much I love Neverness, this series is perilously close to being unreadable. Zindell clearly loves Lord of the Rings, and is seemingly incapable of breaking free from its orbit. The story is terribly derivative, and while his uniquely powerful and gentle take on morality and obligation could add an interesting spin to the material, his heroes and villains end up falling into the same trap of flattened, stark morality that weakened Tolkien's work at times. In the end, we're given an interesting hero from an interesting family who has nothing to do but endure a series of horrifying mishaps, and thus be harrowed into something approaching a pure instrument of fate -- which is to say, a cross between Frodo Baggins and Mallory Ringess (the hero of Neverness and its sequels).

I couldn't make it past the second (very wordy) book in the series. It's possible that after the near-endless series of crises that characterize the story to that point things ease up and don't wallow endlessly in melodrama, but I was pretty disheartened and disinclined to put any more effort into the series. If you like Terry Brooks and David Eddings, you may enjoy this, but fans of action may be put off by the interior nature of some of the characters, and fans of Zindell's more successful works may well be put off by the overwrought black and white nature of what's on offer here. ( )