This book is a parody of an Irving novel. Constantly shifting time, place, and names makes it very confusing. Major plot events are improbable, and book is nothing but a concatenation of unrelated and random scenes. Simply terrible -- hard to believe this is the same guy that wrote Owen Meany.

Gosh is a great writer, but this is definitely not his best effort. His most recent book, A Sea of Poppies, is simply outstanding, and should have won the Booker. His previous book, The Hungry Tide, was also very good. Skip this one, and try one of the recent titles.

An enjoyable read, beautiful prose, pretty good story line. My only criticism would be that it treads the line of young-adult fiction -- not because of the fantasy element -- just a bit too simplistic in terms of character development. An example of an outstanding fantasy for adults would be Mark Helprin's "Winter's Tale".

but a tough read, in the sense that it's a bit of a downer -- if you insist on likable characters, and/or up-beat endings, this is not the book for you.