18) Harpist in the Wind, by Patricia A. McKillip

Bought this a while back because it was rated (by some people) ahead of Arthur C Clarke’s The Fountains of Paradise, which beat it for the 1980 Hugo Award; it also won the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel.

I started off rather enjoying the travails of the protagonist, who has been endowed with super-powers and must save the continent, while at the same time keeping his relationship with his girlfriend on track. Unfortunately I lost patience with it about half way through; it’s the third book of a trilogy, and doesn’t really stand on its own (too much back-story needing to be explained); also I wasn’t convinced by McKillip’s world-building – very little sense of landscape or human geography. Probably my general state of fatigue didn’t help.