(yay!)

Michael Dirda reviews Paul Park's latest:

A Princess of Roumania progresses slowly, but Park has much he wants to show us along the way. Virtually all the characters are surprisingly complex, true mixes of light and dark, often unsure of what they're doing, suffering both mischance and, less often, good fortune. In the end, just the wrong person comes into possession of Kepler's Eye, an amulet imbued with a shocking power.

Miranda's story will continue next year in The Tourmaline . In the meantime, A Princess of Roumania should be enough to soften the blow of summer's end. At the least it provides an escape from -- or is it to? -- the "real" world.

Oddly for Dirda, the review is mostly spent in plot summary. So I actually just suggest you read the book for yourself rather than the review.

Now I go back to reading Jeff Ford's wonderful new The Girl in the Glass. (An Editor's Choice in this week's NYTBR.)

(The parentheses around the post heading mean I'm _still_ on hiatus, only whispering to you every now and then when I can't stand not to.)