A review by snowmaiden
Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick

3.0

This book began very promisingly and then just fizzled. Since there wasn't a lot holding my interest, I started paying attention to point of view. The beginning of the story is told in first person by Rose Meadows, then the point of view switches to third person limited omniscient for a while. Finally it switches back to first person, but with a very different-sounding Rose, who recounts things she couldn't possibly know and couldn't even have learned from talking to the other characters. This distracted me a lot, but I really don't think I would have fixated on these problems if the book was interesting. Ozick is a capable writer, and there were many beautiful passages, but not a whole lot happens in the middle section of the book, and the action just sags. The end, when it finally comes, is abrupt and not satisfying at all.

I think there probably was a good story here, but it didn't quite get told. In my opinion, this book could have stood a lot more editing and was released before its time. It's always so disappointing when that happens.