Holdstock tries to write more accessible this time and it just makes things worse. I gave up at page 130. I skimmed through some of the rest. There's a part later on about masonry canibals. Well, savages that eat masonry. What was he thinking? It is very hard to write about surreal things because anything goes. It's hard to make it seem credible and involving. Holdstock struck a nice balance between external, undeniable reality and internal manifestation in his first book, Mythago Wood, but after that it's just become a blurry free-for-all.