"A sky that runs like a clock. A world that runs like the sky."

My library classifies The Ordinary as science fiction. I call it fantasy. The back cover says it is a powerful and entrancing tale of magic, science and the mysterious truth that binds them together (so i guess that's somewhere in between?) The author, Jim Grimsley, also calls it science fiction even though it shares the same world with his early fantasy novel Kirith Kirin (though it is not a sequel to that novel). He says that he is

"exploring the interface between a culture that believes in magic and one that believes in science and I ultimately wish to explore the kinds of doubts that arise in each world as a result of the presence of the other. The book presumes that science will eventually explain magic, and thus my own belief that the science fiction designation is earned, if more softly than hardly."

I'm still not sure i agree, but who am i to argue? The novel itself is very interesting (if you can keep all the names and cultures strait) both in the arrogance with which the technologically advanced culture approaches what it considers to be the less advanced culture of Irion, assuming that it will be able to take advantage of all her resources for it's own purposes. Irion is not as easy as it appears and neither is this novel.