It is not a good sign that a few hours after I finished this book, I couldn't recall what the ending was. Aspects of this were good - the magic is creative, the characters grow, and the initial story had a nice fairy tale quality. Aspects of this were bad - the romance seems forced, characters seem to vanish until summoned, and I either didn't get or there was no purpose to the assassin. Some technology in this near-future novel is not well described, and other tech items appear to be a geekish name dropping. For me, this novel just didn't live up to the cover blurbs and hype. 2 1/3 stars - better than just okay, but a long distance from "I liked it."

minor When the "machine code" appears on the screen of the caddy, the author mentions parentheses. Is it possible that a lisp machine truly launched the first computer A.I.?