BL: Bright of the Sky (Kenyon, Kay)

[kgbooklog]

Kay Kenyon, Bright of the Sky
Pyr (2007) ISBN: 978-1-59102-541-2
Score: -2

Start of a series called the Entire and the Rose; the former is a parallel universe, the latter is what they call our universe. The Entire is a standard elfland: seemingly immortal lords who are incapable of creating art, a highly regimented culture designed to stifle dissent and creativity, roughly medieval technology except for strange specialized organic things (including sentient airships), telepathic horses, prophetic navigators, and time passing at different rates. The book starts with folks from Earth discovering evidence of the Entire, indicating that maybe the hero wasn't insane when he claimed to have spent a decade there. So they send him back in order to secure trade routes, and he agrees in the hope of finding his wife and daughter (left behind on his first trip). Of course he ends up safely in the Entire (despite the complete lack of thought that went into sending him), and everyone he meets quickly sort themselves into people who risk everything to help him and his family, or those who wish to harm his family. The POV changes without warning (once in the middle of a paragraph) to ensure that the reader hears every thought and emotion, no matter how trite and obvious. This could have been a decent YA fantasy novel, if it weren't for the publisher claiming it's adult science fiction.

Comments

[calico-reaction.livejournal.com]

What about it strikes you appropriate for a YA audience? I really liked this book, but the pace would bore the crap out of a YA reader, methinks, and the POV, a loose omniscient that took me the whole book to get used to, doesn't work with most adults I've heard who read this, so I doubt a YA reader would have patience for it.

Just curious. That last statement's rather blunt. :)