Paul Park, The Hidden World
Nov. 17th, 2009 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienFinal entry in the series that began with A Princess of Roumania. Can Miranda Popescu make up for her earlier blenders and save Great Roumania as her dead aunt wants? Should she even try, or does the aunt have her own selfish agenda?
I'm a little embarrassed to admit that by the time I started reading this I'd forgotten that the wicked Baroness died in the previous installment. It turns out not to slow her down much, anyway, though it shifts her sphere of operations more into the hidden world and the land of the dead. The plot twists and turns, in and out of the dreamscape of the Hidden World, and though Miranda spends a lot of it either bedridden or completely absent from her physical body she finally manages to take action and find a use for the powers of the White Tyger, bringing about a low-key and slightly offbeat resolution, though it comes at a high price.
This has definitely been one of the weirder and less conventional fantasy epics I've read in the last few years -- rather bleak in tone, and seriously short on eucatastrophe, but with enough distinctive and interesting -- if not entirely admirable -- characters to keep my interest. Having the world we know turn out to be basically a construct designed for the heroine's protection and education -- though it turns out not to be quite that simple, in the end -- is a risky move, tough on the suspension of disbelief, but the author more or less pulls it off.
I'm a little embarrassed to admit that by the time I started reading this I'd forgotten that the wicked Baroness died in the previous installment. It turns out not to slow her down much, anyway, though it shifts her sphere of operations more into the hidden world and the land of the dead. The plot twists and turns, in and out of the dreamscape of the Hidden World, and though Miranda spends a lot of it either bedridden or completely absent from her physical body she finally manages to take action and find a use for the powers of the White Tyger, bringing about a low-key and slightly offbeat resolution, though it comes at a high price.
This has definitely been one of the weirder and less conventional fantasy epics I've read in the last few years -- rather bleak in tone, and seriously short on eucatastrophe, but with enough distinctive and interesting -- if not entirely admirable -- characters to keep my interest. Having the world we know turn out to be basically a construct designed for the heroine's protection and education -- though it turns out not to be quite that simple, in the end -- is a risky move, tough on the suspension of disbelief, but the author more or less pulls it off.
