sensibility was marred by "something basically wrongheaded about his female characters," noting that Occula, despite her spirituality, ends up being satisfied as a rich man's mistress, and that Maia, despite the reader's expectation that she will have some kind of apotheosis, ends up on a farm something like where she started. "What is it," she asks, "that Mr. Adams wishes us to make of it all?" The New Yorker quipped that though Maia's career as a Playboy Bunny was reminiscent of Watership Down, she seemed more like a fish, and her swimming "changes the course of much more than her career". It said "Mr. Adams's artistry distinguishes his work from those didactic fantasies which border on science fiction"; instead the aim was entertainment, as shown in the elaborate settings, and the reader has no reason to put the book down. References External links British fantasy novels 1984 British novels 1984 fantasy novels Novels by Richard Adams Novels about slavery Viking Press books