In the latter part of the book, Marak wakens and has trouble remembering which passage through the desert he is on. That aptly sums up the plight of the reader. I forced myself to finish, because I kept thinking something would actually HAPPEN. The happenings in the book, however, given the context of endless desert travel, seemed contrived: dust storms (of course - what else can happen in the desert?); childbirth; Tain's potshot; running out of water/food; desert predators; they all seemed inserted just because something needed to happen. Compare, for example, to The Key to Rebecca, where the trek across the desert was brutal, but it was only a lead-in to the story, not the story itself. I also found the book depressing. The "victory" at the end was not an uplifting triumph, it was a non-event, framed by an apparent huge loss of life (although we never find out how many perished). I did find the hermaphroditic tower of the cover art interesting, though.