Bright of the Sky

Bright of the Sky is a 2007 science-fiction-and/or-fantasy novel by Kay Kenyon, marking the start of the series entitled — poetically, if opaquely — The Entire and the Rose.

It is slightly less weird, I think, than Perdido Street Station, and slightly weirder than Wicked.

It depicts in thin slices a future Earth, and in broad swaths a strange microuniverse known to its inhabitants as the Entire. The back of the book describes the Entire with the bizarre phrase "a landlocked galaxy," which describes it about as well as any other concatenation of two dictionary words. Its geography (cosmography?), variable and not-quite-fractal, remains outside my mental grasp: I can understand it as far as being a five-limbed rosette* with branching tendrils, larger than the Ringworld by several orders of magnitude, but details beyond that elude me.

Despite the decidedly nonplanetary nature of the Entire, the novel might best be classified as planetary romance — although I wouldn't be half surprised if it slides into sword-and-planet somewhere along the way. The storyline is compelling, if somewhat fragmentary: this is understandable given that it's the first in a series, and only cursorily attempts to be a full story in and of itself. (Unusually, much of the action takes place before the novel's beginning, though it does not really start in medias res per se... apologies for the vagueness; I'm desperately trying to avoid spoilers.)

So far it scores 1/1; this is enough for me to intend to head out to B&N tomorrow after work and pick up the next in the series (A World Too Near, and frankly City Without End if they have it). I'm very much looking forward to seeing where Ms. Kenyon takes the Entire.

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* Yes, there is a horrible, vile pun here.