Wayne Knight wrote:

[_On the Spine of Time_]

You should really move it up your list, you won't be disappointed.

Not to be a stick-in-the-mud, but IMHO, _OtSoT_ was enjoyable mostly
because of his descriptions of some places that I had the pleasure of
visiting in western N.C. His writing style is (for me, anyway)
overbearing; he's never met a cliche he didn't like, and he seems bent
on packing as many metaphors-per-square-inch as possible into his writing.

It's not that I mind a good metaphor, but his over-reliance on them
tends to actually interfere with what he's attempting to describe.

Don't get me wrong, I've read the book several times and will
probably pack it along with me on my next trip to the Smokies, but for
someone who has never experienced the streams of the area, I can see how
the book could be less than fulfilling.


Chuck Vance (and no, I don't think I could do better than
Middleton, but that's why I'm writing on ROFF :-)