The fantasy genre as a whole is terribly frustrating for me, because I adore fantasy -- the world-building, fantastic wonder of it. But the vast majority of fantasy takes all that promise and squanders it on cliched, trite plots, flat characters, and a really frustrating sort of cultural blindness that was especially frustrating in this book.

Have you ever read Diana Wynne Jones? She's one of the few fantasy writers that I (almost) consistently love -- I'm always thrilled when she comes out with a new book.