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Unlike Bookpossum, I wasn't thrilled with the way the book started. I generally like openings in media res, but here there was far too much description of the landscape for my liking--it didn't grab me at all.
Overall, I'm rather wishy-washy about the book. A lot of it seemed vaguely familiar--I may have read it many years ago--and pieces here and there reminded me of other works; I kept thinking of Green Darkness (the parallels of past and present), Brigadoon (dissatisfaction with current life vs. a romanticized past), and even The Haunting of Hill House (the obsessed person's pretense of leaving). I know, I'm a bit weird.
I couldn't make myself believe that Magnus's concoction was anything more than a version of LSD and the trips anything more than hallucinations. I wasn't particularly fond of the 14th-century setting at first but eventually became more interested in it. I liked Vita and the boys.
Mostly, there was little that stood out for me as especially noteworthy one way or the other.
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