All icing, no cake. I ate it anyway.

Bought for the cover. Black and white and red, gorgeous, sat in the stack looking better than everything around it for about a year before I picked it up.

And the tents are lovely! Genuinely. The ice garden, the wishing tree, the clock. I would queue. I would pay whatever they were asking.

But so little happens for such enormous stretches, and I couldn't have told you at any point what either magician actually wanted, and I mixed up two of the characters — I think one was a twin, or possibly both were? — right through to the last chapter, which suggests I wasn't gripped so much as gently steeped.

Read most of it in the bath and let the water go cold, which is either a recommendation or a sign I had nothing else on that evening. Six.