I only picked up this book because I saw that Orson Scott Card had raved about it. Now I have to wonder how much futuristic fantasy Card has read. This work clearly owes much to "A Canticle for Leibowitz," "Dune," "Star Wars," and other classics. It's originality lies in the way that it has combined bits and pieces of these works rather than in any innovation of its own. It begins well, providing just enough information about this new world and these new characters to capture the reader's interest and attention. However, there are ultimately too many characters in too few pages for any of them to be fully developed, and there are too many wheels-within-wheels for the plot to be completely comprehensible. It is clearly Machiavellian power politics coupled with a pseudo-Catholic religious hierarchy that wields civil power as well, but rather shallowly realized.

I finished it primarily because I was hoping that the ending would re-capture the excitement of the beginning, but it did not. It clearly sets the scene for a sequel, but since I don't care about any of the characters or what happens to them next, I doubt I'll read it. I might be interested in a prequel, one that more fully explained the hints and clues about the past that are sprinkled throughout; that world seems more interesting than the one that replaced it.