Indeed, his description of the increasingly chaotic Paris under siege is spellbinding. Ball is not afraid of putting a scene's underlying sentiment on display, and his love scenes can be unabashedly emotional. O n the other hand, if you enjoyed reading Victor Hugo and Jules Verne when you were a kid and have spent your adult reading life secretly wishing you could find the same sort of innocent, melodramatic rush in print, you're in luck. In pace, heft and story, Ball delivers nineteenth-century, romantic adventures by the handful. B ut of course, he's up to something else too.
Nothing beside remains.
The lone and level sands stretch far away. But with Ball, at least, we get to see the adventures before they were replaced by that lone and level sand. Copyright 1999 riverrun enterprises, inc.