This book haunted me before I picked it up. There it was on everyone's shelf. There it was, cheap, on the used book shelf at the bookstore. It seemed to be everywhere. I'd always pick it up and then promptly put it back down again. It seemed like a book I should read. I mean, it's called "The Lyre of Orpheus" for crying out loud and Robertson Davies is no slouch. A book about putting on a mythic opera? Should be the book for me. But I always pushed it aside.

Then it showed up on the dollar shelf at the bookstore just at the moment I was about to go on an intercontinental journey. So I finally submitted. It's good. It's a little bit like my life, in a way. The last page especially made me go "hmmmm." I don't think it will spoil it to say that the last page talks about the power of myth and how in choosing to bring one to the public, sometimes the myth can take over and start acting through you. Given that most of my work is myth based, I can say that this is absolutely true.

I guess I just wished that the myth acted a little more strongly through this novel. It was myth-light, really. And academic/art-history/patron politics heavy.

I would have enjoyed more lyres and swords and less political machinations.
But if you're interested in the politics of patronage, then by all means, pick it up. It's interesting and good. Just - well, a little bit boring, really. It could have used a few actual trips to the underworld or a tune from Orpheus or some kind of excalibur.