Ka: Dar Oakley In the Ruins of Ymr, by John Crowley

Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr by John Crowley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


There's a lot of strong elements in this book that got me to finish it. Dar Oakley is a great character, a Crow who ends up with a fair amount of People rubbing off on him--he is aware of it and concerned the whole time. Crowley told the tale from the perspective of someone listening to Dar Oakley tell his story, so it's a Crow perspective filtered through a human, and he gets that right. The prose is lovely, it may be just a bit old fashioned now but it's wonderful to read. The story of Dar Oakley's long, long life is wonderful and mysterious.
(view spoiler)[There are hints that the storyteller is living in apocalyptic times--the world seems to be in active but not violent collapse. Environmental. Timely, almost too much so now. (hide spoiler)]

But oh, the pace. There's a whole lot of words here for what is actually accomplished, and even though they are good words they are too many. This book could be about a third shorter and be better. The action does not really build to a conclusion, so the interest in the book is in how it rolls out, and I began to tire about halfway through. The payoff was just not adequate for so much reading. Overall I'm glad I read it, but I am left wanting at least some of my life back.



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