Berkley Medallion, 1977, 222 p.

I have found previous books written by Scyoc to be solid if unspectacular SF/fantasy, well put together. This, though, was only her second novel (I haven’t read her first, Starmother,) and getting through it was a bit of a slog. A disease called bloodblossom has caused the book’s two main human characters, Verrons and Sadler, to be quarantined on the planet Selmarri, along with a bird-like creature variously referred to as the Ehminheer (after the name of the planet it came from,) as k’Obrohms to the humans, Tiehl to itself and Bright-Feather to Aleida, one of Selmarri’s indigenous inhabitants. Another group of humans came to Selmarri long ago and have regressed into subsistence.

Aleida’s people have an ancient history where they had the ability, now lost, to harness the sun’s energy in order to fly and to manipulate matter. Her quest to obtain the crystal material which will restore this power is intermixed with that of the humans to understand the processes whereby flutes with a calming effect on the regressed humans are dispensed from a temple. Using them tends to produce a kind of brain fog. Tiehl has a rigid sense of territoriality and as his faculties decline defends his perch with ever more ferociousness.

The conflicts between them all escalate to a climax in which all but the Eminheer come out relatively well.

Pedant’s corner:- “Time interval later” – or equivalent – count; in the upper teens. Occasional lines were printed in a smaller, lighter, type-face without there being any reason for that. Verrons’ (innumerable times, Verrons’s,) Wells’ (Wells’s,) “free of he mind” (of her mind,) maw (as ‘mouth’, a maw is a stomach.) “With behement nails she raked dried mud” (vehement, I think.) “It was colourless, clear,” (yes, anything colourless is, by definition, clear,) “‘and than catch a nap’” (and then catch,) “a fear-struck tableaux” (tableaux is plural, ‘a fear-struck tableau’,) “lax pores, Small bodies” (‘lax pores, small bodies,’) “led way” (led the way. This was one of many instances where the definite or indefinite article was missing in front of a word which required it.) “Gutteral utterances” (Guttural,) chornom (context implies a time piece, chronom?) cannister (x 2, canister.)

Avon, 1989, 266 p.

Scyoc’s default setting seems to be an agrarian/mediæval social organisation. Feather Stroke shares this with her previous novels but has an added dimension.

Dara is the daughter of a headsman of a village of smallpeople in a society where a generation or so ago people emigrated to a different continent to escape both the influence and domination of the powerful priesthood of the Sun God Tith and the associated suffocating social hierarchies. Local indigenous inhabitants called Ilijhari make occasional trading visits in the form of a man called Te-kia who is always closely accompanied by an eagle-like bird known as a quirri. Since Dara has strange dreams in which she inhabits the bodies of birds we know this to be significant.

Dara’s life is changed when Kels Rinari, an important, self-made trader from the city of Port Calibe, comes mob-handed with uniformed, armed men and a damen-kest to demand the hand in marriage of her sister Mirina in return for “protection.” This assertion of the renounced continent’s privileges is an unwanted harbinger of the old ways coming to the new home. Mirina can either accept the offer, refuse it, or take the third traditional option, suicide, which last would leave Dara to become the object of Rinari’s designs.

Mirina’s suicide leaves their father to take the news of her death to Rinari. On the way he persuades Dara to go to the Ilijhari for safety. Her journey is fraught but she meets and is befriended by Kentith, a renegade priest from the other continent.

Among the Ilijhari she finds she is descended from them, her true mother died in child-birth and she was given to the smallpeople to bring up since one of the village mothers had had a stillbirth around the time. It is with the Ilijhari that Dara’s affinity with birds is confirmed, her ability to inhabit their consciousnesses.

In a sequence which resonates with the history of the Americas in our world, Te-kia tells her, “The land was here, sweet and rich. And there were men and women appointed to guard the land. Wisely, they treated it as a thing of soul, living and aware, to be respected, to be preserved. …. They called themselves its children, but they understood they were its guardians as well. But after a while, others came from far shores who were stronger than the guarding peoples. The intruders were greedy and full of destructive powers. They had stolen from the earth itself and from its surrounding sphere, and they thought that whatever they chose to inflict upon the living earth and its creatures was only their right.”

On finding her father has not returned from Port Calibe Dara resolves to go there and confront Kels Rinari, relying on her Ilijhari nature to put him off marrying her. Kentith, despite the dangers involved for him demands to accompany her. The priests of Tith are anxious to capture him but in any case can bring down fire from the sun and use him as a vessel for that. Mpreover his distinctive priestly eyes make him a target for suspicious locals .

Once in Port Calibe, Dara finds Rinari to be a more complicated character than she had initially assumed and all three determine to undertake the business of combating the influence of Tith’s priests.

Feather Stroke is a pleasing enough fantasy not too demanding on the reader.

Pedant’s corner:- “‘I was only waiting for to ask’” (for you to ask,) “at it center,” (at its center.) “Perhaps the orchard was in some was as much a manifestation” (in some way as much a manifestation,) “two year later” (years,) “before Dara could calm him, before she should orient herself” (before she could orient herself.) “Finally she saw that it would surely dash itself against the walls – and not so harmlessly as Ti-ri-ki had done” (the opposite is the case: the smaller a creature the less likely it is to be damaged in a collision; Newton’s second law, F = ma.)

Avon, 1971, 174 p.

In the prologue three alien space ships appear over the Puget Sound in 1979 (eight years in the future when the novel was written) then make their way to the Great Salt Desert in Utah where one of them deposits something into the salt, but later investigations fail to reveal anything. Twenty-five years on Marley Greer finds a crystal on the salt bed and lifts it up. It melts in her palm to leave a tiny black seed, which she feels compelled to swallow. That night she tells her husband she is pregnant.

The body of the story unfolds over fourteen days in 2024 when protagonist Hadley Greer (daughter of Marley) undertakes a trip to the Salt Lake Desert where there is a settlement known as New Purification, inhabited by adherents of a cult which effectively worships the aliens. It is led by a Dr Braith (who perhaps surprisingly isn’t the usual money-grasping, sexual predator such leaders commonly are.) In New Purification everyday life is made easier by robotic assistants known as mechs. Over the years of the settlement over twenty people have disappeared in the desert. Braith maintains they have been taken up by the aliens.

Hadley is silver-eyed and has metallic hair which often moves of its own volition. Later we find she is prone to salt hunger. Braith’s associate Jacob has similar attributes to Hadley. Her companion, Richard Brecker, turns out to be a minder, employed by the State Investigation Bureau to keep tabs on her. (His organisation’s initials allow Scyoc to allot them the neat nickname, SIBlings,) Through him she finds there have been other trans-species children but only those close to salty deserts survived.

Unknown to Brecker, Hadley takes trips into the desert at night. There she finds she can see and travel through a strange city, that of the aliens, whose civilisation was dying and so they sought to seed other Earths. In an incidental conversation Brecker and Hadley appear to express themselves as in favour of a return to a system whereby people are imprisoned if they are deemed psychologically capable of a crime rather than actually having committed one. This is an oddly illiberal notion which does not really fill out the background.

The discovery of two murdered bodies in the desert precipitates the novel’s crisis. Brecker finesses the situation by blaming the deaths on rogue mechs but it is Jacob rather than Hadley who is involved with the resolution.

SF is full of linguistic coinages, some more mellifluous than others. Scyoc overdoes the tendency here, where people do not undergo air travel in aeroplanes, they dart in machines called avidarts. Among others we also have a transceiving device named a communipact, food dispensers called autocafs, and the word mecheries where ‘factories’ would be perfectly sensible. But it was her first novel. We can forgive a certain exuberance.

Pedant’s corner:- “the street – and the city itself – were deserted” (those dashes remove what’s inside them from the surrounding phrase so make the verb singular. Either they should be removed themselves or it should be ‘the city was deserted’.) “Besides each work stood a slender pole.” (Beside each work,) nonplussed (nonplussed,) metallicly (metallically.)

Penguin, 1986, 251 p.

Reyna is a barohna’s daughter all set to make the trip into the hills to face the challenge which will make her into a barohna herself or die in the attempt. Her parents are Khira and Iahn from Bluesong who have fallen out over this tradition, with Iahn returning to the plains where Khira met him. On the day of the annual dance (when it seems the inhabitants of Brakrath choose mates) Reyna meets a hunter, Juaren, one of the last of his kind. That evening though it is her mother who picks out Juaren to dance and take to her bed. Some weeks later Khira tells Reyna she will not be the next barohna, her unborn sister will, and forbids her to take go on her challenge. The Arnimi, off-planet humans reliant on instruments to a very un-Brakrathi extent and who have been studying the people of Brakrath for many years, have discovered which part of the brain allows a palace daughter to become a barohna and Reyna has not inherited it. That her father is himself an off-planet Rauthimage is almost certainly a factor in this and Khira has therefore been forced to mate with a Brakrathi to fulfil her purpose of providing a daughter to replace her as barohna.

The communication from Birnam Rauth (of whom Iahn is a clone) via the bluesilk from the previous book in the sequence provides a new purpose for Reyna’s life though, as the Arnimi propose she travels to the likely planet where he is held captive to find and, if possible, rescue him. Her companions will be Verra, an Arnimi, and Juaren, whose dynastic purpose having been fulfilled is something of a spare at the palace.

Reyna’s tale is interspersed with details of the lives of some sithi, indigenous bear-like creatures of Birnam Rauth’s prison planet; in especial, Tsuuka, mother of several sithi one of whom, Dariim, is so enthralled by a red starsilk that he disobeys her strictures about penetrating deep into the nearby forest and falls into danger. There creatures called spinners produce the starsilks which sing to the sithi and also protect the eldest tree within which Rauth is trapped.

Through the third person text, Reyna keeps asking herself questions, as does Tsuuka. As a means of information provision (I hesitate to call it dumping) and illustration of Reyna’s lack of knowledge of the sithi’s planet, this is fine but there was perhaps too much of it.

As if to prove that Science Fiction is rarely about the future the Arnimi recording medium of choice in this book is tape. In Starsilk’s year of publication, 1984, of course, this would have seemed unremarkable and to have invented another a seemingly unnecessary extrapolation. How much has changed in the past 36 years.

The journey to find out where and how starsilks were produced and Birnam Rauth sequestered is where the trilogy has been headed all along. Though it takes us off Brakrath with its unusual culture and doesn’t really illuminate those of the Arnimi and the inimical Benderzic, it is not a disappointment. This is good, solid SF – even if it doesn’t quite reach the heights of the genre.

Pedant’s corner:- “picking up his work without word” (without a word,) “to show them that none of those supositions were true” (that none … was true,) “it had flirted away” (flitted makes more sense,) “a deep sound accompanying its ascent” (this was of a ship – or shuttle – coming down from orbit; descent, then,) “‘Danior described the night sky in just enough detail that our ship’s system was able to calculate the location of the forested atea he described’” (a knowledge of its night sky would be enough to locate a planet’s position, but not a specific area on its surface,) “‘to see if its drinkable’” (it’s,) “more briskly then before” (than before,) abosrbed (absorbed,) “‘maybe its nocturnal’” (it’s,) Komas’ (Komas’s,) thougts (thoughts.) “She saw what she hadn’t dare believe” (dared.)

Penguin, 1984, 266 p.

This is a sequel to Darkchild, and is again set on the planet of Brakrath but here Scyoc broadens out her depiction of the societies there. Events are seen through two viewpoint characters, Keva and Danior, but a third appears in the Epilogue which sets up another sequel.

Keva has been brought up in the warmstream among the fisher-people by Oki. But Keva’s dreams are dominated by thoughts of fire. While seeking a poison antidote in Oki’s stash she finds a blue cloth which sings to her when she touches it. She finds Oki has lied to her about her origins and that her memory of a bearded man on a horse is real. She is the daughter of Jhaviir, one of the clones of Birnam Rauth – a Rauthimage – from the earlier book, and of a barohna now dead.

Danior’s mother was also a barohna (Khira from Darksong) and his father was The Boy from that book. Since barohnial inheritance comes through the female line Danior sees no place nor future for himself in the barohnial palace.

Both Keva and Danior set off on their own, Keva to attempt to find her father, and Danior to make his own way. Jhaviir – as the Viir-Nega – has collected together some of the desert people to live in a settlement but they are constantly at war with those who still roam. This pastoral existence and the wanderings through the plains reminded me of Phyllis Eisenstein’s In the Red Lord’s Reach, but perhaps hunter-gathering/partly settled societies are all similar.

When the nomads discover that a barohna has come to the settlement it provokes them to form an alliance to attack. Despite her reluctance Keva is forced to use her barohnial powers as mediated by her sunstone to defeat them.

The vast majority of this novel deals with the situation of the desert clans. The background to Scyoc’s trilogy remains resolutely that – background – for the most part. Little of the Rauthimage inheritance both Keva and Danior embody is referred to – except for the glimpse of Birnam Rauth, as tramsitted via the white cloth Jhaviir possesses, experienced by Danior as he touches it. This presages the third book in the trilogy.

Bluesong can be read on its own. No knowledge of the previous book is necessary and it reads as not merely the second part of a series but works by itself as a novel.

Pedant’s corner:- lightening (lightning.) “‘She’d dead.’” (She’s.) “It made her feel no better than he drew back at her tone” (that he drew back,) dispell (dispel,) vaccum (vacuum,) “instead the Nathri-Varnitz” (instead of the Nathri-Varnitz,) “three pair of eyes” (pairs,) a missing full stop at one paragraph’s end, an end quote mark at a paragraph break where the next continued the same speaker’s dialogue. “The Viir-Nega brows rose” (Viir-Nega’s brows,) “for constance” (constancy,) insured (ensured,) he ask uncertainly (asked,) “she needed to the think now” (no ‘the’ needed.)

Penguin, 1984, 253 p.

Mankind has spread out amongst the stars and adapted to the various planets where it has settled, speciating as required. One of these is the planet Brakrath, which is ruled by female barohna, able to channel the powers of stones to help melt winter snows and allow agriculture to take place. The narrative is carried by four voices, The Boy, Khira, Darkchild, The Guide, and Khira’s grandmother Kadura. That makes five you say? Well yes, but the boy from chapter 1 has become Darkchild by Chapter 3.

Khira’s mother Tiahna is the local barohna and remote as a result. Khira has effectively been brought up by her sister Alzaja who is in turn about to make a trip to the mountains (where their other sisters have journeyed before, not to come back,) to try to find the stone in her heart that will allow her to take over from Tiahna, or be killed in the attempt by the beast she challenges. Khira is left to face the winter alone in Tiahna’s palace. After an overwhelming noise wakes her one night she finds a boy in one of the tower rooms. She dubs him Darkchild. He is under compulsion to experience and remember everything about his new home. (In chapter one, as The Boy, he had been removed from a previous family on another world and subjected to medical intervention.) In his head is The Guide, a memory storage and control device he can only subvert by deluging it with sensory information.

Khira is alternately bewildered and intrigued by Darkchild but still befriends him. The interludes where The Guide takes over his body baffle her, though. Things come to a head when the expedition members of another human race, the Arnimi, potbellied with greying hair that hangs to their shoulders, return to the barohnial hall from their winter excursion investigating how the Brakrathi have adapted to their world, only to prevent Darkchild’s access to their quarters and recommend Khira puts him out in the snow. They say he is a Rauthimage and speak to Darkchild in his own language.

Not till Tiahna returns for the thaw do they reveal they find Rauthimages abhorrent, cloned from a cell specimen of a man called Birnam Rauth without his permission and hence anathema to them. Rauthimages are employed by a ruthless race called Benderzic to find weaknesses in adapted human races so as to exploit them.

The story juggles Khira’s experiences with Darkchild’s and The Guide’s and the one chapter narrated by Kadura fills in Brakrathi background.

This is a solid piece of Science Fiction of its time, with a well-worked out background and a more than adequate depiction of the psychologies of its main actors. (The Arnimi and Benderzic remain somewhat sketchy, though.)

Pedant’s corner:- vestigal (vestigial,) hostess’ (hostess’s,) minx’ (minx’s,) grill (grille,) Bullens’ (Bullens’s,) hiccoughing (there is no connection to a cough; hiccupping,) “‘you won’t even see my any more’” (see me any more,) “Khira led way” (led the way; several more instances of ‘led way’,) Rabbus’ (Rabbus’s,) Baronha (elsewhere the spelling always ended ‘ohna’,) snowminx’ (snowminx’s,) pondersome (ponderous,) vocal chords (cords,) pondersomely (ponderously.)

Futura, 1987, 222 p.

Keiris is the scion of a family/clan, of Adenyo stock, which has the genetic ability to span (communicate telepathically) with sea creatures known as mams. The ordinary people of his society are Nethlor who accepted the Adenyo after their lands were drowned following a volcanic eruption. When Kieris’s sister Nandyris fails to return from a sailing expedition he appears to be the only heir to his mother’s calling – yet he has not manifested any capability in it. In the aftermath his mother acknowledges her powers are fading, reveals to him that he had a twin sister whose father had taken her away very shortly after the birth and charges Keiris with the duty of setting out to find them both and bring his sister back.

This planet has two moons, whose celestial wanderings lead periodically to a period called drowntide when the land to which Keiris travels is subject to daily inundation. In his journey through the islands at the end of the land the book has similarities to Kim Stanley Robinson’s A Short, Sharp Shock (which this novel predates.) Keiris eventually meets the tide folk, where his father is a sort of headman, and his sister – who has the hallmarks of another called race, the rermadken. In following the tide folk’s yearly pilgrimage Keiris develops a spanner’s voice and we discover from their folk tales that all these varieties of human originated from, and left, a poisoned Earth a long, long time ago.

This novel still stands up reasonably well thirty-plus years after its first publication. The cover doesn’t though.

Pedant’s corner:- Nandyris’ (Nandyris’s. Many of the names in this book end in “is” eg Tardis. Every one of their possessives was rendered is’ rather than is’s, ditto Harridys’,) “you care more for your own affairs then for our heritage” (than for our heritage.) “What shore had then chosen?” (What shore had they chosen?) “It gave into” (usually it’s “it gave onto”,) “on an unchartered beach” (uncharted,) “a very young women” (a very young woman,) patienty (patiently,) compell (compel,) “on nights when its warm” (when it’s warm.)