It does have one common oddity which, like the homosexual reimaginings of slash, bothers me because it is frequent without bothering me in any instance. Here's heaps of magic, much-telegraphed links between rites of power and the obsessions of our most primitive, String-and-Bone age ancestors, and there is hardly any food. Sex and gore play better now, but if I'm going to believe that rituals and obsessions are that old, they have to involve great lashings of food sacrificed or invoked. Especially in midwinter; the Hogfather needs his turnips. My superficial memory of various anthropology museums bears this out; I should look it up.
ISBN 0-380-78903-5
So wrote clew in
SF&F.