This book was written 4 years before So You Want to Be a Wizard and it shows. Not in a bad way, but you can see Duane already engaging with the questions that define her oeuvre - names matter, people matter, goodness matters, it is our job to hold back Death in whatever way possible.

There's a line from...DWJ, I think, where she's talking about the difference between writing for adults and for kids and that the latter is so much easier because you can trust kids to pick up on subtlety, while you're always worried about adults missing things and so feel impelled to beat them over the head with your point. Duane trips a little bit over that in this book in a way that she doesn't in SYWTBAW, in part because I think that she's working these ideas out and, as I know so very well, not being entirely sure promotes verbosity.
There's something absolutely fascinating about reading sff from the mid - late 20th century that are working on trying to figure out gender stuff and specifically the ways in which men and women are gendered. And while it is still operating within the binary and very much of it's time, it's asking the about the ways in which masculinity (and femininity) are not inherent to being male and female. Not to mention the way that Duane is both questioning heterosexuality (or orientation as a thing at all) and also gets a bit stuck in the pro-natalist argument for heterosexuality and tries to work around it in a way that is not strictly necessary.

Also, Sunspark = Fred. Change my mind.

Okay, having said all of that...I am SO UNUTTERABLY HERE for the theology, which is what I started with. "What does it mean to do good in the world?"

(Also, WTF with the original cover? Seriously?) 

Also also, can JKR just *stop* so that Diane Duane can stop haunting the walls of her scottish castle and finish the fourth book in this series?