This is a great exercise in style and atmosphere - as I said while reading, the Gormenghast is strong with this one. For my tastes, though, that leads to too tight a focus. The world is too tightly drawn around its central spire, the characters have too singular and straight a line, and the plot was complicated only by the interweaving of present and past lines of revelation... which also didn't work for me, as I found there were no surprises in the past storyline as it started getting towards the finale, merely confirmations of things that had been referenced already in the present line. It never really dug deeply enough into itself to give a richness of world, of character, or of story. And while I liked Lucien and Dino, I was convinced by neither Lucien's relationship with Rafaela, nor his antagonism with Golia, which left the emotional core of the novel a little hollow for me.

Nevertheless, an unusual and interesting addition to what fantasy's doing these days.