Beautifully written, but frustratingly lacking in any narrative drive.
The opening chapters -- the escape of Raule and Gwynn from the bounty hunters pursuing them across the Copper Country -- is brilliant, character, setting and action all working together in harmony, and hinting at great depths to come.
And then ... it's three years later, Raule and Gwynn are safely established in the tropical enclave of Ashamoil, establishing new lives for themselves, and it's all talk, talk, talk. An entire chapter of Gwynn's philosophical ramblings with the local whiskey priest. And entire chapter of Gwynn getting high, and then stumbling around, searching for a woman artist he's become obsessed with. Talking to his horse.
I liked the world building. I liked very much how grounded in a kind of reality Bishop's strange, "alien" world is. But I just reached the point, at page 132, where there was no plot whatsoever developing ... no sense that all of the elegant, beautifully written the bits were going to serve a greater purpose.
The opening chapters -- the escape of Raule and Gwynn from the bounty hunters pursuing them across the Copper Country -- is brilliant, character, setting and action all working together in harmony, and hinting at great depths to come.
And then ... it's three years later, Raule and Gwynn are safely established in the tropical enclave of Ashamoil, establishing new lives for themselves, and it's all talk, talk, talk. An entire chapter of Gwynn's philosophical ramblings with the local whiskey priest. And entire chapter of Gwynn getting high, and then stumbling around, searching for a woman artist he's become obsessed with. Talking to his horse.
I liked the world building. I liked very much how grounded in a kind of reality Bishop's strange, "alien" world is. But I just reached the point, at page 132, where there was no plot whatsoever developing ... no sense that all of the elegant, beautifully written the bits were going to serve a greater purpose.
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