I finished Endymion and just...hit a slump. (Endymion is good, btw.) The only thing I've finished in the past few weeks has been The Nowhere Hunt, by Jo Clayton. I'm still sorting out how I feel about this book.
On one hand, it's a bog-standard mid-series (The Diadem series) little book that assumes you know the protagonist and her abilities (has magic sci-fi energy crown thing) that plots like Writing 101. Protagonist, impetus for action, complication, etc, etc. There are developments, but they only make sense or have meaning in the greater scope of the series. It's a bit dull, and character development is largely either non-existent or actually going in reverse.
On the other hand, there's a second story and second protagonist woven in that exist largely outside the ken of the first protagonist. It's hard to say more without spoilers, but imagine a heroic action-adventure tale of Christopher Colombus discovering the New World...except interwoven into it is the story of a Native American woman and her tribe who bear the very real consequences of said "discovery".
I can't tell if it's a scathing take-down of the blithe optimism in (functionally) first contact SF; a writer trying to dress up a dry interlude story with a "simultaneously playing in the background" story that eclipses the main story; some kind of authorial conceit; or something else entirely.
