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Extremely dark and violent, with very little redeeming light. The main character is victim of long term sexual abuse, and its a memory she deals with every day. She also has a very troubled relationship with her sister, a slightly older and sexually comfortable person. The story starts with the heroine being stalked on her way home, and then presumably saved, although that perspective is called into question later. Her rescuer enlightens her to her heritage, but before she can fully come to terms, she is kidnapped and pulled into faerie, or "the old county." I felt truly uncomfortable in Maureen's narrative, and feel the author pulls out all the traditional female tragedy stereotypes in the bluntest and most obvious ways. It was awkward at times, and she dwells on her abuse in a way that seems unreal and hollow. The frequency and detail felt like someone was imagining what it would be like to live with abuse rather than actually writing about the experience. Her sister and her relationship is immediately portrayed as angry and jealous. The level of mutual venom displayed within pages of meeting her sister makes it hard to believe they would have lived together at all. Add the rape and pregnancy experience at the end, and I started to get extremely annoyed by the man-feminism. Both Maureen and her sister come into their own power in a very bloody way, minimal epiphany way.