THE FALL OF THE KINGS, by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman. This has so many beauties and delights I'd have to write another book to list them, but for much of it just the same I felt there was a glass wall between me and the characters. I'm going to read it again sometime in the next few months, since that will be no trouble whatsoever, and see if the reaction was just something wrong with me, or what.

yes! yes! i started it and there are things i just love about it and it's so rich and dense and there's so much going on and...and... it isn't that i don't like the characters but they seem so remote, somehow. and i loved, loved, loved swordpoint--i just feel somehow separate so far. but onward i push--it's not like it's painful.