Somehow I missed Robin McKinley‘s PEGASUS when it came out in 2010. (Oh. 2010. I had a baby. That’s how I missed it. Heh. Anyway.)
I spent the first part of the book kind of feeling like I’d outgrown McKinley and that probably my 12 year old self would have died of the happies reading this book but that it (unlike Judith Tarr‘s magnificent LIVING IN THREES) wasn’t actually speaking to my 12 year old self.
I did notice, though, that it was…more like Damar…in its writing than…anything else I’d read by her in decades. And that made me happy. And as I got further into it, it got more Damar in feeling, until the scene where it became absolutely shiningly clear that this story takes place across the sea from Damar and nobody can dissuade me of that fact, and then I was joyous because it felt so much like–like going home, and it was wonderful and I loved reading it and
then I started reaching the end and I started wondering how it was going to wrap up, because McKinley notoriously does not write sequels, and then about 40 pages from the end I realized it wasn’t *going* to wrap up, and as I was going into the last chapter I realized it wasn’t even going to END, it was just going to STOP, and that’s what happened.
Apparently she actually intend(ed)(s) to finish the story, but it has been very, very difficult to write, so who knows if the story will ever be finished. That’s minorly less aggravating than her not planning to write more AT ALL, which is what I expected upon reaching the last page, but still, ARGHGHHGHG.