Clouds End Hc

Stewart, whose first two novels each won Canada's Aurora Award, crafts as his fourth (after Resurrection Man) an elemental tale as deceptively simple as a Mobius strip. Brook is a young island orphan of Clouds End, which lies dangerously near the fearful Mist. When she is ""twinned"" by the shapechanger Jo, a haunt who threatens to usurp Brook's place, her lover, indeed, her very soul, Brook must struggle to overcome the shapechanger, whom she loves against her will. Meanwhile, complementary plotlines mesh with this main story, as Brook, Jo, Rope, Foam and Shale set out to save their land from the evil forest emperor whose armies are island-hopping ever closer. Eventually, Brook and her companions arrive on the mainland Arbor, where human conflicts are engulfed in a clash of fire and water that threatens to destroy the world. Stewart's gentle, often poetic diction belies the noisome and gratuitous violence that Brook encounters during her journey, which incessantly recurves upon itself like the seamen's knots through which Stewart symbolizes his characters' actions and motives. In time, Brook and the others learn to restore their wholeness by slaying the Mist-creatures within that are tearing them apart. Sadly, Stewart never quite brings that wholeness into vibrant life in his well-written pages. (Aug.)