The Snow Garden... Christopher Rice...

I read it today.

I was expecting sophomore slump. Second novels are notoriously iffy. Often quite bad.

The first few pages of the novel didn't draw me in. But, by the second chapter the characters were starting to speak to me. By the third or fourth, I was hooked.

His first novel, DENSITY OF SOULS, was a book that I read in one sitting. So is the second. Well, one day anyway.

I won't comment much on the storyline except to say that it's very complicated. Very. It takes place over a winter semester at a small east coast university. The cast of characters is quite large and nearly every character in the book is much more than they first appear.

It reminded me in parts of Donna Tart's The Secret History, Elizabeth Hand's Waking the Moon and Arturo Perez-Reverte's The Club Dumas. But these are positive comparisons. I don't mean to imply that it's derivative of any of these novels. And it only bears passing resemblance to any of them.

There was one scene in the copy that I read that I imagine most of you will never read. There's a scene where a character looks over the skyline of NYC and glances past the radio towers over the World Trade Center. And it takes place in December 2001. Sort of odd reading that. But, I digress.

It's the sort of book that you don't want to put down. In some ways, I liked it more than his first novel. In some ways less. But, most of the latter probably has to do with Density's New Orleans setting. I love books set in New Orleans. Can't imagine why...

Any novel that leaves me a bit disturbed at the end and also leaves me wanting to read more of the characters, even if I don't *really* wanna read about them since their story is done, is a good book.

And this was a good book.

But, perhaps you can decide for yourself. In February. When the rest of you can get a copy. :P