I received a copy of this book as a Christmas gift in 1999 and, I'll be honest, didn't like it right away. I had several false starts and trouble getting through the first chapter, but once I got to about page 30 I was hooked and couldn't put it down. I was also a bit put off by McKillip's introduction. She almost seems to come down hard on the young idealistic author that she used to be and not give the book enough credit. She says that she was inspired by the Lord of the Rings trilogy and wanted to write like that, but what McKillip created was a classic coming-of-age story that spoke to the teenage me much more deeply than LofR ever did. I have read this book many times now, including reading it aloud to my husband-to-be on a cross country car trip.