The Door into Fire, Diane Duane
Review from July 27th, 2013

I can’t believe how long this has been lingering on my to read pile. I’ve had Diane Duane recced to me so many times, and I have a ton of her books. I guess I was partly saving it so I had something awesome to look forward to, part afraid it wouldn’t be awesome.

Well, it didn’t bowl me over. I do love the characters, that they have their flaws and get things wrong and love and struggle and share. I love the fact that they’re openly pansexual and polyamorous as a society, and that’s done realistically too — they still have those moments where someone will go with another person to hurt their main partner, someone will be overly possessive… I loved that relationships like that between Herewiss and Lorn weren’t romanticised, that they could and did hurt one another — and then made up.

There were things that felt less than original, a bit derivative: the whole pseudo-medieval setting, of course, and the Mother-Maiden-Crone thing. I come across that a lot in Arthuriana, and while I appreciate the power and rightness of the imagery, I’m not usually fond of it. But then on the other hand there’s this world’s creation myth, and the place of love within that creation, which somewhat redeems that to my mind.

At times it was too navel-gazing on Herewiss’ part, at times it was a bit info dumpy — but I read it all in one go, and had a horrible lump in my throat at the end of the story, so I don’t think I could give it less than four stars. Now to make sure I get round to the other two books…

Rating: 4/5