Picked this one up shortly after first publication and have only now got round to reading it. The central character is a boy brought up by trolls, à la Tarzan or Mowgli, who then seeks his destiny among his own kind; he wanders into a human war between subsistence pastoralists and settled agriculturalists (Native Americans vs European feudal settlers seeming to be the paradigm) and eventually, in an ending that came rather abruptly though did at least fit with what we had seen before, chooses his own way.

I was a bit dubious about the sexual politics of the book. The story is all about how Maggot (né Claye) becomes a Man; the only thoroughly evil character is a eunuch who was born male and is addressed by female pronouns; and Maggot’s crucial decisions are about rejecting the women who might care for him. That may not have been what the author intended but that was what came across to me.

A more minor snark: “prodigal” does not mean “long-lost”, it means “wastefully extravagant”.