Mary Gentle - Orthe: Chronicles of Carrick V

The elements all seem to be there, but these books don't quite come together in the way they should. (Two novels, each long in its own right, plus a short story - and the strange, offbeat ending of the second novel throws everything which had gone before it into a different light...is it, after all, a cautionary tale, then?) There's no doubting Gentle's ambition or her ability to evoke a world or to tell a story, nor her capacity to weave in complex and challenging themes, but in this sci-fi/fantasy amalgam account of contact between human and alien society, it's not quite all in place and so the novels don't grip as they might have.