The word "painstaking" is purposefully chosen, for Valen is addicted to the pernicious drug doulon, which is actually a kind of magic spell utilizing the narcotic seeds of a plant called nivat; the spell transforms pain to pleasure, resulting in both a physical and a psychological dependency: the latter, if anything, more nefarious than the former. Valen's dangerous dependence on doulon is a weakness his enemies have learned to exploit, and as events climb toward a crescendo in Breath and Bone, they take every opportunity to do so.

Valen has no shortage of enemies. There's Gildas, a monk who betrayed his friendship and abducted his young friend Jullian at the end of Flesh and Spirit. There's Sila Diaglou, the female leader of the Harrowers, who wishes to eliminate all learning and civilization, including magic, reducing humans to little more than beasts. There are the Danae, elflike beings who live in a parallel dimension called Aeginea that is coterminous but not coincident with the human land of Navronne, and who hate Valen because of some mysterious long-ago trespass on the part of his grandfather.

And there is Osriel, the bastard son of the deceased king, who is in a fight to the death with his two brothers for control of the kingdom and is not above practicing the blackest of magics to win the throne. Even many of Valen's friends, such as his fellow members in a conspiracy that goes by the name The Lighthouse, devoted to preserving human knowledge and culture against the Harrowers, view him with varieties of contempt and caution.

Yet Valen is more than he appears to be, and what seems a curse may prove the salvation of Narvonne and Aeginea, for the two lands are more closely linked than anyone knows, and an ancient breach between them is threatening the existence of both.

A wounded land cries out for healing

In basing her novel on the Arthurian legend of the Fisher King, which has many mythic antecedents itself, Berg doesn't depart in any significant way from the well-paved paths of high fantasy. But unlike many writers who follow these paths, she does not zip along them, content merely to take note of familiar landmarks along the way to the conclusion of whatever quest her characters have had thrust upon them. Berg is a conscientious writer and traveler; indeed, not only does she stop to smell the roses, but she meanders off the path with some frequency, even if she always returns. For those of us who enjoy what John Crowley called the "snakes'-hands" of story, these digressions into invented culture and myth, such as the dance-based magic of the Danae, are part of what makes the larger journey worthwhile ... as is the discovery that what seemed a digression ain't necessarily so.

In fact, much in Breath and Bone is other than what it first appears to be, and this goes for characters and their relationships as well as places and events in the plot. There are so many revelations, unmaskings and reversals that writing a review becomes a perilous undertaking for any critic wishing to eschew spoilers. But I will note that Berg plays fairly with her readers, even if they may feel at times as if they've been slipped a dose of doulon.

What makes all the twists and turns work is that Berg carefully grounds them in precisely observed details of place and character. She is especially fine in tracing the developing relationship between Valen and a brusque healer named Saverian, as well as in limning unexpected depths in Osriel. The sensual yet violent world of the Danae is also rendered with real skill, as is the fanaticism of the Harrowers and their chillingly sincere leader. Only once does she falter, though regrettably at a key point: the character of Jullian comes across as unbelievably naïve, a paragon of purity shading into outright stupidity. I found it impossible to share Valen's attachment to this callow youth, on which much hinges.