„Resonant and heartbreaking in ways that very little sf is able to manage” Locus
In the Peninsula, the veiled women rule: guardians of the Dapur, the sacred hearth. In Ranganar, the island city of the south, the Samsui reformers, builders of machines and factories, pursue their heretic dream of the „Three Springs”: liberty, equality and hard work. The Dapurs of the traditional, feudal Peninsula, whose first rule is to preserve lives, have forbidden armed rebellion against the foreigners from over the sea, even though these alien Rulers now seem bent on ruling a country full of corpses. But Derveet, outcast heir of the Garuda family, the Peninsula's paramount sovereigns, has raised a new kind of rebellion, calling to her aid secret powers the foreigners can't understand: and the veiled ladies at last, have signalled their support. Why have they changed their minds? It's something to do with Cho, the doll-who-is-a-person, a perfect machine out of the legendary past, who has… (tovább)
„Resonant and heartbreaking in ways that very little sf is able to manage” Locus
In the Peninsula, the veiled women rule: guardians of the Dapur, the sacred hearth. In Ranganar, the island city of the south, the Samsui reformers, builders of machines and factories, pursue their heretic dream of the „Three Springs”: liberty, equality and hard work. The Dapurs of the traditional, feudal Peninsula, whose first rule is to preserve lives, have forbidden armed rebellion against the foreigners from over the sea, even though these alien Rulers now seem bent on ruling a country full of corpses. But Derveet, outcast heir of the Garuda family, the Peninsula's paramount sovereigns, has raised a new kind of rebellion, calling to her aid secret powers the foreigners can't understand: and the veiled ladies at last, have signalled their support. Why have they changed their minds? It's something to do with Cho, the doll-who-is-a-person, a perfect machine out of the legendary past, who has given herself, body, heart and soul, to the last of the Garudas. . . But should Derveet and her friends be paying more attention to Cho's Cat, the elegant and heartless feloid Divine Endurance? Divine Endurance has never forgiven the humans, those toymakers of long ago, who created her and then abandoned her. . .
When a dangerous narcotic drug called Flowerdust arrives in Ranganar, carried on a tide of refugees fleeing unrest in the north, Derveet sets out to find and neutralise the supply. A drug-fuelled crime wave must not be allowed to threaten the rebellion's city of refuge. Her quest takes her to the Peninsula's mysterious heart, where nothing is as it seems, and hope and nightmare are hard to tell apart. Two young people, opposites in every way, are faced with an appalling responsibility, and Derveet herself, the dalang; the puppeteer, must face her own frailty, and the demons of her past.
