Haemas Tal leads a life of privilege (the cover of the paperback edition of Moonspeaker proclaims) as the daughter of one of the most powerful families of the mind-talented Kashi. But what the reader soon learns is that privilege -- in the form of luxuries, soft-living, and scores of servants -- comes at a high price for any female fortunate or unfortunate enough to be born into the paternalistic, and even misogynist, Kashi society. No matter how formidable their own abilities, girls like Haemas can expect nothing better from life than perpetual obedience to their (often overbearing) male relations, arranged marriages, and a duty to produce another generation of talented Kashi children in order to maintain their families' rank and prestige.
Fortunately for the reader -- and the scope of the story -- K. D. Wentworth's heroine escapes this dismal fate in very short order. By the second page, Haemas is outcast and fugitive, falsely accused of a murderous attack on her own father. From that point on the action rarely flags, as she is forced to make her way among the low-caste Chierra, meanwhile evading capture by either of the two very different men who are determined to track her down and bring her to "justice." As if that were not enough, it soon develops that Haemas is not the only one in danger. In fact, her entire planet faces a catastrophe of time-bending and world-shattering proportions, a threat only she can counter -- or could, if the circumstances surrounding the attack on her father hadn't left her mind-damaged, missing parts of her memory, and crippled in the use of her telepathic and extra-sensory powers.
The author has peopled her landscape with a variety of interesting characters: bandits, Chierra priestesses, an order of monk-like Kashi scholars and teachers, even a mysterious alien race who (like everyone else in the story) seem to have their own plans for Haemas, whether she wishes to fall in line with them or not. Exotic flora and fauna add texture to the background.
By choosing to concentrate on the action, and to tell her story from the alternating viewpoints of characters who have more important things on their minds than filling in the reader on details of history and culture, Wentworth provides a suspenseful and fast-paced narrative. In doing so she also leaves a great many questions unanswered. It's clear that humans are not the indigenous race on their world -- neither the Kashi nor their Chierra vassals -- but how did they come there? How did their religions and their attitudes toward gender evolve in such radically different directions? There are hints of other lands and other human societies, but we learn next to nothing about them, and are left to wonder why the Kashi and the Chierra live so isolated from these others that they don't even appear to trade with them. It is difficult to tell whether the story is Fantasy or Science/Fantasy -- are the Kashi mind-talents psi powers, or purely supernatural? Did they leave their original home world by way of space ships, or by stepping through some magic portal?
Yet I never had the impression while reading Moonspeaker that these unaswered questions represented gaps in K. D. Wentworth's world-building -- which if not fully explained at least appeared consistent, and was always enough to illuminate the action. Instead, the impression was that the author knew much more than she was telling, perhaps saving some of those answers for the two sequels, House of Moons and Moonchild, where they might be more immediately relevant to the plot.
Fortunately for the reader -- and the scope of the story -- K. D. Wentworth's heroine escapes this dismal fate in very short order. By the second page, Haemas is outcast and fugitive, falsely accused of a murderous attack on her own father. From that point on the action rarely flags, as she is forced to make her way among the low-caste Chierra, meanwhile evading capture by either of the two very different men who are determined to track her down and bring her to "justice." As if that were not enough, it soon develops that Haemas is not the only one in danger. In fact, her entire planet faces a catastrophe of time-bending and world-shattering proportions, a threat only she can counter -- or could, if the circumstances surrounding the attack on her father hadn't left her mind-damaged, missing parts of her memory, and crippled in the use of her telepathic and extra-sensory powers.
The author has peopled her landscape with a variety of interesting characters: bandits, Chierra priestesses, an order of monk-like Kashi scholars and teachers, even a mysterious alien race who (like everyone else in the story) seem to have their own plans for Haemas, whether she wishes to fall in line with them or not. Exotic flora and fauna add texture to the background.
By choosing to concentrate on the action, and to tell her story from the alternating viewpoints of characters who have more important things on their minds than filling in the reader on details of history and culture, Wentworth provides a suspenseful and fast-paced narrative. In doing so she also leaves a great many questions unanswered. It's clear that humans are not the indigenous race on their world -- neither the Kashi nor their Chierra vassals -- but how did they come there? How did their religions and their attitudes toward gender evolve in such radically different directions? There are hints of other lands and other human societies, but we learn next to nothing about them, and are left to wonder why the Kashi and the Chierra live so isolated from these others that they don't even appear to trade with them. It is difficult to tell whether the story is Fantasy or Science/Fantasy -- are the Kashi mind-talents psi powers, or purely supernatural? Did they leave their original home world by way of space ships, or by stepping through some magic portal?
Yet I never had the impression while reading Moonspeaker that these unaswered questions represented gaps in K. D. Wentworth's world-building -- which if not fully explained at least appeared consistent, and was always enough to illuminate the action. Instead, the impression was that the author knew much more than she was telling, perhaps saving some of those answers for the two sequels, House of Moons and Moonchild, where they might be more immediately relevant to the plot.
