Daniel Polansky is an acquired taste. what can i say, i've acquired it. every book he writes is very different from every other. none of them fit neatly into categories. sometimes, the author seems self-indulgent. often, he's brilliant and frustrating at the same time. this one happens to be hiding in the shape of a portal fantasy, after Lewis's Narnia: set in a dystopian present-day world, with a failing high fantasy world on the other side of the wardrobe. growing up can be hard, and this is a very grown-up world without blinders on. the family, dysfunctional of course, needs an escape hatch, but doesn't want (being relentlessly modern in outlook) the responsibility of being depended on by the Other Side. in the structure of the book, the failing of the C.S. Lewis ideal and the British Empire both is mirrored in the other-worldly events, which begin to lean towards apocalypse. there's a fictional solution at the end. but is that a reasonable resolution of the subject matter? opinions may differ. there are some big ideas, and wonderful passages of prose. it's probably Polansky's best book so far. whatever will Polansky choose to write next? onward, with or without the stuffed toy knights with their Rudyard Kipling ideas! i'm in! bring it on! ( )