Karen Lord's second novel carries deliberate
echoes of Ray Bradbury's classic Mars colonisation stories. It's
refined, meditative and life-affirming, and its exploration of gender politics and ethnology
confirms Lord as the natural heiress to Octavia Butler and Ursula Le Guin * Financial Times *
An engrossing picaresque quest, a love story, and a moving character study of two very different people coming to understand themselves . . .
Lord is on a par with Ursula K Le Guin * Guardian *
An episodic quest with a Caribbean-flavoured mix of societies * Sunday Telegraph *
A
rewarding, touching and often funny exploration of the forms and functions of human culture. Plus, it has flying monks - a universally improving ingredient! * SFX *
The author is clearly a class apart, and doubly so in terms of her prose . . .
Utterly astonishing * Tor.com *
A real delight to read * Fantasy Book Critic *
A
sweet and gentle and sorrowful novel, written with
warmth and wit and wonder . . .
sumptuous * Speculative Scotsman *
The kind of novel that
truly illustrates what science fiction is capable of doing. Lush and yet not overwhelming, it is
a love story firmly rooted in a story of humanity told with alien cultures * Best Fantasy Stories *
The imagination behind her galaxy and its variation of the human race
cannot be faulted * Sci-Fi Now magazine *
An
intelligent, slow-burning, love story with rewards along the way * Starburst *
Reads like
smooth jazz comfort food,
deceptively familiar and easy going down, but
subtly subversive * Nalo Hopkinson, Los Angeles Review of Books *
A
fantastic read with very
unique, memorable characters * Bibliosanctum *
Lord is perhaps aiming to take over the mantle of Ursula Le Guin as the
mythmaker of sci-fi. Ms. Lord's
thoughtful and
engaging novel is a
gentle fable that concentrates on human relations * Tom Shippey, Wall Street Journal *
The
sheer scale of this novel is
impressive . . . this book gives
new meaning to the phrase that
still waters run deep * Speculating on Speculative Fiction *
Deft storytelling, a stellar (or would that be 'interstellar'?)
cast of root-worthy
multiracial characters and a
riveting slow-burn love story. A
must-read!' * Mala Bhattacharjee, Romantic Times *
If you like
sweet friends-to-lovers romances, this is a
wonderful and rewarding example * Heroes and Heartbreakers *
A
fascinating and
thoughtful science fiction novel that examines adaptation, social change and human relationships . . . that
rare beast: a true original * Kate Elliott, author of the Crown of Stars series and The Spiritwalker Trilogy *
Science fiction doing something new and fascinating
* io9 *
Rewarding science fiction for emotional grown-ups * Mysterious Galaxy *
