I might re-visit this review later as in all honesty I've only read about 3/4's of the book at this point, but so far I've found the book to be a near pointless (and inferior) rehashing of G.R.R.Martin's Ice & Fire cycle. Tad, what were you thinking? (And I'm a HUGE fan of "Otherland", as well as "War of the Flowers".) This is just a very pale shadow of another author's more powerful work. And I was so-o-o looking forward to this series. I'll keep reading and hope he has something original up his sleeve ...