The rare book that effortlessly minds the gap between your mainstream fantasy reader and your litfic snob (a title I wear guiltlessly), by obviously being written with neither in mind. Clarke happily chases her muse wherever it takes her. Her conceptions of magic are completely impressionistic and strikingly fantastical in a way that feels, and it seems obvious, but this is so rarely the case, actually magical. Her footnote stuffing feels less like a re-conception of the novel structurally and more like that of an overeducated historian, so delightfully knowledgeable on the topic that they can't help butting in with tidbits they fear they may never have another chance to bring up. Her humour, her conceptions of put-upon gentlemen and upper-class poms, are so distinctively plain and understated. It's all so effective in constructing an alternate history that you buy into it effortlessly. She glides off a duck's back, where other novels might punishingly render homework. At 1000 pages, it manages the trick of being breezy and substantial. It feels like a minuscule vertical slice of everything that has ever happened in its universe, but, so very vitally, an exceptionally interesting vertical slice. The ultimate trick of 99% of fantasy is that the most important historical events have already happened and are being reacted to or retrod by the protagonist. Clarke doesn't shy away from this but cleverly reorients it by having the protagonists rediscover this history, making it much more of an engaging process. And, I cannot stress enough that it finds itself at a very entertaining point in its timeline. Hell, it even ends on a satisfying note! How many doorstop fantasy novels deign to wrap up in a way that is both earned and planned? How many even bother to end at all? Quietly, humbly, even, one of the best books of the millennium.