A whole year went by in which I pondered irritably upon this matter, and then in May — hurrah, at last and not-before-time-too — the second volume of the Trilogy was released, which takes up the story precisely from the end of The Fulfilments of Fate and Desire.

To be honest, I was a little disappointed.

Okay, not really. I'm not that hard to please — honest! It's like this:

The curious thing about the beginning of The Shades of Time and Memory is that it not only starts from the ending of The Fulfilments of Fate and Desire, but overlaps it in a couple of scenes. No doubt we all have the original trilogy committed entirely to memory. I know I do: Splendid, soft-focus happy ending in which Cal, Pell and Rue all kiss and make up and head off for the bedroom as violins play, happy bunnies skip, and the Wraeththu equivalent of Barry White makes appreciative grunting noises about the power of luuuurrrrrve. I liked that ending. It gave me a warm glow and badly-thumbed copy of the book from re-reading it.

Alas for my bunny-fantasy, a couple of chapters into Shades and it becomes apparent that there is trouble in Paradise. Then we actually get to go into the bedroom in that scene from Fulfilments. Hmmm. There is a distinct lack of violins. Barry is nowhere in evidence. Oh, Ms. Constantine, how could you! All my bunnies throttled at birth! I may have to go and lock myself in the loo and whimper a bit.

It gets worse. If you have tears, prepare to shed 'em now. I vaguely recall some other author saying that her way of creating conflict for her characters was to "...chase them up a tree, and then throw stones at them." Storm, it seems, likes to use very tall trees and enormous great boulders. Her writing often has a streak of unflinching cruelty. She doesn't hesitate to make the reader wince, and let me tell you, I winced so hard I put the book down at the end of Chapter 7 in a state of clinical depression and wondered if I wanted to continue reading at all. "Oh come on!" I cried. "Give these guys... er... hars... a break!"

Fortunately, after extensive therapy, I was able to pick the book up again, which was to prove a canny move on my behalf, because things do indeed start to pick up from here on in. Things really start to move along at a spanking pace with the sudden introduction of... plot! Yes, the all-new Wraeththu Histories possess something which — dare I say it — was sometimes slightly missing-in-action in the original trilogy — a coherent, fast-moving tightly-structured, great, galloping plot! It's all so exciting! Secret agents and mysterious extra-terrestrial entities. Ambiguous and enigmatic evil-doers. Strange, inter-dimensional powers. And, of course, thwarted passion, jealousy, sexual tension and... er... sex. The moist, juicy stuff that makes Storm's books so much more enjoyable and intelligent than your average sword and dorkery books.

Some new characters are introduced to us as Pellaz produces (out of a hat, one surmises) some more of his Inexhaustible Supply of relatives. But it is the complex development of the original characters which makes the book such a strong and mature piece of writing. Making a welcome return in the role of Evil Adversary is erstwhile Varr Supremo, Ponclast. In the original books, he was very much your bog-standard baddie. Now he is very, very different. Many other characters too go through difficult periods of reassessment. In fact, the only character who doesn't appear to have changed very much is Pell. He's still whiney, self-obsessed and arrogant.

You're right — I don't like him much. Although he is ostensibly the Hero, the high muck-a-muck Great King Tigron whom all adore, for the reader he is not exactly the most loveable character ever committed to paperback. This, again, displays a wonderful depth to Storm's writing as she subtly draws the distinction between telling the reader, and showing him/her. She tells us that Pellaz is the greatest thing since sliced bread. She shows us that he is flawed and selfish. For me, and I suspect many other female readers, I lost all sympathy for Pell back in Enchantments when he got Rue in the pudding club and promptly skipped town to become ruler of the world, leaving Rue (literally) holding the baby and enjoying the delights of single parenthood. Bastard!

I cannot begin then to tell you how much delight it gives me at the end of Shades, therefore, when Pell's reproductive karma finally catches up with him. Ha! Serves him right! ('nuff said!). Perhaps in Book 3 he will finally be forced to grow up.

I liked this book very much indeed. I liked it even better than Bewitchments, which up until now had been just about my favourite book of all time. And having read Shades, I was able to re-read Wraiths and get far more enjoyment out of it as a part of a much larger tapestry. I like the length of these stories — the way they take their time and spread out inexorably in a lazy and labrynthine pattern. And in conjunction with the revelations in Wraiths, I also went back and re-read the revised editions of the original trilogy and found some small but (maybe?) significant changes. (Or maybe not. Who knows? Not me, I'm only the reader. Help!)

Shades finishes on a bit of a cliff-hanger. There is a satisfactory conclusion to the events which it chronicles, but at the same time, you know there is more (oh, much more!) to come. I can't wait. Really. I've already pre-ordered my copy of the third volume. I'm marking off the days on my calendar. I'm pacing the floor and being unpleasant to small children. Oh, Dear Ms. Constantine, please write as fast as your fingers can type. You can even throttle as many bunnies as you like, I don't care. I just what to know — what happens next???