I loved this book. Absolutely loved it. A few months ago, io9 posted a link to the first chapter, which I devoured, and promptly discovered that none of my libraries (yes, I have four) actually HAD a copy I could take out.

So I bought the ebook as soon as I found it and finally got around to actually reading it.

McIntyre's grasp of animals, people, the relationships between them and healing is masterful, her characters come alive on the page and the world she has created makes me wish there were more. This book is everything I want in a science fiction novel - thoughtful, compelling, with excellent characters and a world that relies on the character's experience of it to convey both the familiarity and the alien-ness.

Also, McIntyre's prose is great; rather like Patricia McKillip, she's mastered the art of doing a lot with simplicity, though she never sacrifices clarify (which McKillip sometimes does).

What can I say, I loved this and will undoubtedly now meander off to hunt down some of her other work.

I've read this book too many times to count (which, admittedly, is no surprise) and it's one of those books that gets better every time I return to it. Reading it as an adult (rather than as a 12 year old girl, for example) just makes the characters feel more alive and exciting than ever.
McKinley's forte has always been her characters and every single one of them (even the plants) in this story shines.

Patricia McKillip almost, but not quite, retells the story of the Lady of Shalott, though she also brings Romance (in the Arthurian sense) along with folklore into a story that transcends those antecedents to become surprisingly contemporary. I apologize for the tone of this review, it's paper writing season for academics.
The prose is, as always, top notch. I do love this woman's writing.

I liked this one less than McKillip's usual work, though it was still a lovely read. I'm not sure why--either the main character was less compelling than usual or the book seemed to drag more. I think it was the latter; I rarely read McKillip for her characters and it's usually the language that wins me. Maybe it was the combination of less poetic language than usual (due to the point of view character) and the way that everything seemed to take a very long to happen.
Still, I liked the story overall and enjoyed this reworking of fairyland and the stories that surround it.

Patricia McKillip is wonderful, as always. This story reminds me more of her Riddlemaster of Hed trilogy than of her shorter and more lyrical stories, but since I got into her work through Riddlemaster, that's certainly no bad thing. Her flair for words remains undiminished - the ordinary prose is musical and the poetry is excellent. Poetry in fantasy is very hit or miss, but McKillip (possibly by virtue of being married to a poet, not to mention one in her own right) always impresses.
Like the rest of her work, I highly recommend this book.