The Crystal Well is a story of great ambition, hard work, dogged patience --- but of ultimate failure. This is the lot of the protagonist who awakens to find himself in a strange realm where the toll exacted for failure is harsh and everlasting: to be banished. There is injustice in this: the protagonist is branded a failure not because he shirked his task or was slipshod in performing it or that its resolution was ludicrous or banal; but rather because...