Review: The Divided Crown, Isabel Glass

Title: The Divided Crown
Author: Isabel Glass
Date Begun: May 19, 2007
Date Completed: May 20, 2007

I picked up The Divided Crown based on two things: The K. Y. Craft cover art and the Patricia McKillip blurb on the front. I love Patricia McKillip. She is one of the best fantasy writers ever, and some day everyone else will know it. Of course, I don't expect every author I pick up to have the same mastery of language and characterization that McKillip has. However, I thought The Divided Crown would be a safe bet, if Patricia McKillip liked it.

Not so much. I'm glad I bought this on the bargain shelf, because I would have been really pissed off if I'd bought it a full hardcover price.

The Divided Crown has some good points. For example, of the main characters two of them are middle-aged and married with children. That's something you hardly ever see among fantasy novels, or novels period. And I genuinely liked Angarred. But generally, I was left with the feeling that none of Glass' characters were really very smart, and that's never a good way to feel. Certainly, politically involved people should be quicker on the uptake, even if one of them is a recovering drug addict. (I really should have liked this book more than I did. It had a recovering drug addict too. And cross dressing fortune tellers.)

Beyond the characters is Glass' writing. Her style reminds me of Lloyd Alexander, but not in a good way. Alexander's writing was superior - not least because he included jokes. But there is an oversimplified style to Glass' writing here which doesn't do well in a novel this length. Like some of Alexander's writing, I was left with the feeling that I was reading this a bit too soon after taking some Benadryl. But that feeling works with Westmark or The Black Cauldron. I don't know if it will ever work for The Divided Crown.