We've got your back. With the Tough-O-Meter, you'll know whether to bring extra layers or Swiss army knives as you summit the literary mountain. (10 = Toughest)
(5) Tree Line
We're not going to lie: There's a lot going on in this book, and very little of it is directly to the point, plus there's a lot of unfamiliar material to process. For example, we didn't really know anything about Uplanders or Downlanders before reading this book, did you? And on top of all of that, the narrative doesn't just shift from one point of view to another—it also swoops back and forth in time, leaving us to piece it together just as we're figuring out what's going on. Seriously, we don't know where or when we are half the time until midway through the chapter.
That said, this is the kind of book you aren't going to want to put down. You don't need to know all the ins and outs of the Dorn-Lannet, what a koi-boi is, or the political atmosphere in Kayforl in order to be able to identify with the characters and figure out what these things mean to them.