My great sense while reading this is that with a couple more drafts it might have been extraordinary. The idea is fantastic - that there's a maze of light that is somehow a shadow and image of a true maze that exists elsewhere, and that one can find self-knowledge in it - but it's not helped by the continually wavering tone. It has the feel, very much, of a cut-price The Dark Is Rising (one of my favourites) but TDIR is plainly a children's book that can be read with pleasure by adults, whereas The Light Maze can't seem to make up its mind as to whether it's a kids' book starring 12 year old Harriet or an adult fantasy novel starring 20 year old Kit. Harriet is the more interesting character - definite, childish, brutal, yet capable of real imagination - but Kit more and more takes over. There's also a very thinly drawn boy, Barney, who seems to exist to spout hazy spiritual bits of speech, and a more cipher-like character is hard to find.

Also rather deeply irritating is that Harriet's dad has been stuck in the light maze for two years, while his wife and child are left to cope with his sudden and unexplained abandonment. Then he comes back, and there's no real emotional fallout. Sally, the mother, is pretty much hand-waved away out of the text - Harriet refers to her as stupid and weak-minded because she doesn't receive her husband's return and story of the maze with perfect equanimity and immediate belief, and it's all really quite unpleasant. As is the father, Tom, who appears to show no remorse or care as to what his wife has gone through. It's a remarkably childish and silly choice by the text, a choice which may barely be acceptable in a rather thoughtless children's book but is absolutely out of place in the more adult fantasy that the book has, by that point, become.

In short: wasted potential here I think, which is slightly disappointing because the idea was there. It's just the execution that's so off.