Geomancer: Well of Echoes, Book 1

Description

Geomancer starts a new sequence of novels "The Well of Echoes", set some centuries after Ian Irvine's earlier fantasy sequence "The View from the Mirror". The world of Santhenar is under attack from the Void by the lyrinx, giant winged intelligent carnivores, and generations of war have turned human society into a totalitarian spy-state with the front line of the war held over all men and so-called "Breeding Factories" held as a threat over women. Tiaan is a brilliant young artisan in a munitions factory whom the authorities are deliberately pressuring into excelling herself; when she falls foul of her rival Iriis and the apprentice spy Nish, events are set in chain which jeopardise the humanity of two worlds. Irvine's strength here is that he makes us care not only about the idealistic, wet, misguidedly ruthless Tiaan, but also about the occasionally vicious and manipulative Iriis and Nish, who are not merely villains, but products of their unpleasant world somewhat redeemed by their growing regard for each other. This is, attractively, grimmer and grittier than most fantasy novels with a real sense of industrial squalor and a society in paranoid melt-down--and with a neatly unpleasant set of twists at the end. --Roz Kaveney