{"id":2220,"date":"2004-09-01T10:31:07","date_gmt":"2004-09-01T14:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2004\/09\/01\/2220.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:46:40","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:46:40","slug":"book-report-ombria-in-shadow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2004\/09\/01\/book-report-ombria-in-shadow\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Ombria in Shadow"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Two weeks ago, Chris Cobb recommended Ombria in Shadow<\/I><\/a> when I said that I enjoyed a different Patricia McKillip book<\/a>. I picked up this one, and enjoyed it far more than the previous one. There are flaws, of course, and I didn’t particularly like the ending. On the whole, though, it was terrific: sweet, spooky, surprising.\n

There’s a dreamlike atmosphere to it. That’s my main complaint about the ending, as it happens; it’s too much in keeping with that dreamlike atmosphere, which makes it less powerful. Throughout the book, though, I frequently enjoyed the descriptions of things I couldn’t quite visualize, that didn’t work the way they should. The world is not a logical one, not simply in the sorcery but in the way it all looks and smells. I can understand how a reader would dislike it—I suspect I would have hated it fifteen years ago myself—but it works for me.\n

It’s also a refutation of the entertaining maxim that any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology. In many books, that’s true; magic works much like a combination of computer algorithms and athletic prowess. In the Harry Potter books, for instance, being a good wizard is much like being a good Quidditch player, and requires the same sort of combination of practice, study, and ‘heart’ as Quidditch, or for that matter cricket, or windsurfing. There’s intuition, of course, but there’s a good deal of intuition in technology as well. My point is just that magic is, in many books, rule-based and, you know, indistinguishable from technology. In this book, magic is ... something else. Which is interesting, and powerful to read. I wouldn’t like this to be what everybody writes, but I’m glad I read it.\n

                           ,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two weeks ago, Chris Cobb recommended Ombria in Shadow when I said that I enjoyed a different Patricia McKillip book. I picked up this one, and enjoyed it far more than the previous one. There are flaws, of course, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17103,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220\/revisions\/17103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}