Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsIt's a myth, and a good one, but don't expect a novel
Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2018
I liked the mythic quality of the book: the magical landscapes (the suburb of Herot, the station hidden beneath the mountain), the one-dimensional nature of the characters, the use of the older women, and perhaps the mountain, as a kind of chorus. But the very things that made it work as myth made it not work as a novel. The flatness of the characters made their actions predictable, and because the story lived in magic-land, there was no discipline to the prose, that is, much repetition and a whole lot of statically described violence.