Subject: The Outskirter's Secret

From: [email-masked] (Dani Zweig)
Date: Sat, 28 Nov 1992 05:43:13 GMT

"The Outskirter's Secret" is the sequel to Rosemary Kirstein's excellent
first novel, "The Steerswoman".  It takes place on a world which might
be a post-ecological-disaster Earth and might be another world settled
from Earth -- The evidence to this point is ambiguous.  It's a world of
swords and sorcery -- sort of.  The reader recognizes fairly quickly that
what the wizards call 'magic' is what we would call high tech.

"The Steerswoman" sets up the mystery:  Rowan is a Steerswoman (a member
of an order of pathfinders and knowledge seekers) whose innocent inquiries
about some anomalous gems results in a series of attempts to murder her.
A hitherto-unknown chief wizard appears to be responsible.  By the end of
that book she is able to reason out that the gems are artificial, and
that they come from a downed satellite.  (Kirstein's implicit view is that
a technological society can lose much of the technology without losing
the all the modes of thought it engendered.)  Which still leaves the
questions of how and why unanswered, not to mention the question of why
someone thought it worth killing her for asking these questions.

"The Outskirter's Secret" picks up shortly after.  I think the book would
stand up on its own, but the reader would be missing a good deal of the
background and motivation.  Rowan and Bel -- her chance-met companion
from "Steerswoman" -- journey into the Outskirts -- the wasteland
surrounding Rowan's civilization -- in search of the downed satellite.
(Rowan knows approximately where it would have gone down; the problem
is getting there.)

The Outskirts turn out to be part of the same puzzle:  They're an
ecological mystery.  A large population of Outskirters lives in a 
land which is completely inimical to what we think of as normal life
forms.  (Again, the reader may have the background to see part of
the answer that the protagonists cannot.)  By the end of this book
we learn how the two mysteries are connected.  It'll take a third
book before we learn how they are resolved.

I don't care to start trilogies in the middle, myself.  My advice would
be to give "The Steerswoman" a try, if you can find it.  (It appeared a
couple of years ago, and I don't know whether it's been reprinted.)  It's
an enjoyable read.  Once you've read it, you'll know whether you want to
read the sequel.  I'd say there's a good chance that you will. 

-----
Dani Zweig
[email-masked]

   'T is with our judgements as our watches, none
   Go alike, yet each believes his own
		--Alexander Pope