This is the first book in the second Wraeththu trilogy by Storm Constantine

Again, I'm really blown away by her beautiful writing style and the characters I keep falling in love with. This book actually is timed between the second and third in the first trilogy. It is very much the story of the secondary characters in that trilogy. You would think initially that would belabor the story, or at best be "Ground Hog's Day" ad nauseum. It works splendidly. I found myself very grateful not only for the fill-in of detail to the original story, but her deft ability to draw the reader into several characters at once. It's awfully hard to choose a side in her writing, which is the whole point of androgyny anyway. There is no side.

This one really shows the struggles that the incepted Wraeththu have in contrast to those of the pure-born Wraeththu. Only males can be Wraeththu, usually boys or teens. Their inception involves exposure to Wraeththu blood, after which they are no longer human but hermaphroditic forms of perfection, for the most part. Eventually certain castes of the race could reproduce. For many of the young men who were incepted, they are still very much trapped in their masculine personas and their feminine virtues are suppressed, out of fear of them and discomfort with them. The ones that are pure-born don't struggle with that as much, especially if they conceive and bear life. Tthey are more accepting of their feminine. It's very interesting, cos I can see how in the depiction of sexual balance in how the main characters live in first trilogy the reader could easily feel it is just another literary projection of a masculine dominance. But she shows the characters struggling with that too. They know they aren't purely masculine. The Wraeththu don't know who they are yet, and are afraid they will destroy themselves before they can find out.

Oddly the 'women' in the book go through the same thing with regard to their masculine virtues. How familiar.

Interesting to observe how the voice of the feminine evolves in this trilogy. It's very fitting and artful for Constantine to allow it to emerge and shape now. She has an excellent grasp of how her characters grow and evolve and how to "teach" the reader much in the same way to remain included in the lack of sexual polarity she's created. I find that as I enter into the second book of the second trilogy, I don't bring any thoughts of them being human or a gender at all. It's really wonderful and shaped my worldview really well.

Apart from physical androgyny, there is also the presentation of nonpolarized "will," meaning, her presentation of the storyline is so artful that the reader learns in a very well timed succession WHY the characters make the decisions that they do, their true motivations and inner events, that you really can't judge any of them as right or wrong, good or bad. You see the whole picture. That is not an easy style to write, and I admire her for that. ( )

Review located at http://lupabitch.wordpress.com/2007/0... ( )

http://fantasycafe.blogspot.com/2007/... ( )

Book 1 of the Wraeththu Histories and it's a bad idea to read it without having read the Wraeththu series first.

The initial series was complex but had a very strong thread winding through it connecting all the characters and their stories. I liked it very much. This seems to be trying to do a very similar thing without the thread.

I'd recommend it if you had a strong attachment to the initial series and wanted more exposure to the characters.