I brought this home from Common Grounds one Saturday when I released four books there. The opening lines hooked me:

   She was fifteen and she flew.
   Her name was pryn—because she knew something of writing but not of capital letters.

It was a fun read. The main character is engaging: a teenage girl run away to the royal city learns about life and the world she lives in. The characters she meets are fascinating. Each of them have a lecture to give her when the action slows down, and I could see their philosophizing turning a potential reader off. But if you like worldbuilding then you'll probably enjoy the humourous eye Delany turns on our world via their comment. He also does a bit of fourth-wall-breaking narration (to paraphrase, "You, astute reader, would probably have noticed this, but Pryn belonged to a more innocent time and was on top of that only fifteen," that kind of thing) that delights me - I mean, just the fact that anyone does it in our century at all is a delight.

If I had one complaint, it's that the story doesn't exactly end. The novel is a time window and you learn about the piece of Pryn's life story that fits in that window. There is a climax, a denoument, and an injection into the end of principles laid out in the beginning, but for the most part the ending is a bit abrupt, leaving you wondering what exactly the story was working towards. But getting to the last page is great fun ride.

Released on Sunday, November 02, 2003 at Caffe Sole, Table Mesa Shopping Center in Boulder, Colorado USA.

Left it on the main newspaper rack, the one beside the condiments and under the bags of coffee for sale.