The Lost Steersman

One can say Rosemary Kirstein is an excellent author - but not a particularly fast one. There was an 11-year gap between the publication of the last book in this series (The Outskirter's Secret) and this one (1992 - 2003). However, this book is just as good as its predecessors - and that's quite good!
The Steerswoman Rowan continues her dangerous investigations into the plots of wizards, and how they may threaten the life of her people. What might be the motivation to disrupt weather and cause a war for resources? Where is the wizard that she suspects is behind it? Finding out information from an old friend, Rowan realizes she may have to travel even beyond the Outskirts to find her answers, and she must - at least temporarily - abandon show more her vows, in the service of a greater quest. But that quest will lead her to completely different - and weirder - revelations than she expected.
An excellent story, notable for some very unique and interesting depictions of alien life. show less

I stumbled across the first book of this series, The Steerswoman, in a charity shop several years ago and bought it because I vaguely recalled someone telling me it was good. I really liked it – and said so in my review on SF Mistressworks (here). I liked the sequel, The Outskirter’s Secret, even more (see here). So it’s fair to say I had high expectations of The Lost Steersman. And… it sort of almost nearly met them. Rowan is now in the port town of Alemeth after leaving the Outskirts. There’s a Steerswomen’s Annex there, so she hopes to consult its thousands of volumes for more clues about Routine Bioform Clearance, the spell which opens up new lands to the east and so allowing for human expansion, but which appears to show more have stopped and is being misused by the evil wizard Slado. But the Alemeth steerswoman has died and has left the Annex in a right state, so Rowan has to get it all sorted out. And then demons, creatures from the Outskirts, begin to attack the town… Although couched in the language of fantasy, this is clearly science fiction, and Kirstein cleverly reveals more of the ecology of the world as Rowan investigates. Unfortunately, the first half of the novel is slow and a bit dull, and things only begin to get really interesting when Rowan sails south looking for Slado’s hidden fortress. She doesn’t find it – but what she does find tells the reader more about the world than it tells Rowan. They’re good books, these. The paperbacks are long out of print, but they’re still available as ebooks. Worth getting. show less

This is my favorite book in the Steerswoman series so far. 4 1/2 stars
Very much ahead of it's time, published a year before facebook, 3 years before twitter is even founded. We already see a description of fake news.

See, one by one, none of them's smart as a Steerswoman; but if you put them all together, then the really stupid ideas sort of fall out the bottom, and the ideas that make sense sort of clump in the middle where everyone can look at ’em. So, the wrong thing would have to look like the right thing to most of the people doing the looking, and it can’t, because it’s the wrong thing. So, they wouldn’t. Run you out of town. Unless more things happened to make the wrong thing look right. To most of the people. Or if the

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people with the stupid ideas made a lot of noise and kept putting the stupid ideas back at the top, ’cause it takes a while for them to fall out the bottom— it doesn’t happen straight off,

She was sorry, and frightened at herself. She was used to danger, and she thought she’d seen it

At this point in the story I'd thought that Rowan had PTSD, after she almost attacked the disguised children.

The world is as it is, Rowan, and there are three ways to exist gladly in it: You can be ignorant, knowing nothing of its nature; you can be stupid, and know of it but never truly understand; . . . or you can be brave.

By the time you get to the end of the book, you of course know that Rowan has chosen bravery just as she had in the first two books but at a much higher cost. The trip away from the demons was horrific.


I so glad SFBC decided to read BK1, I'm off to start book 4. show less

Another brilliant book by Kirstein! After reading the previous books, I thought I knew what her world looked like, even though Rowan, the main character didn't, but in this book she proved me wrong.She managed to come up with a new story twist that came as a complete surprise to me.

In the beginning of the book, Rowan and Bel have separated, Bel staying in the Outskirts to notify her people of the coming threats, Rowan to notify the steerwomen and to search for Slado. She ends up in a so-called Annex, where copies of the steerswomen's books are kept. Here, she runs into Janus, the steersman who quit and was even placed under ban for refusing to explain why. (view spoiler) she makes some truly remarkable discoveries!

The characters were show more once more very good. Rowan is the same as she was in the previous books, but we learn more about her through her interactions with the regular people surrounding the Annex. Steffie, one of her companions, is also very sympathetic, and it is delightful to see how he develops. Janus is a whole different story. From the beginning, there is clearly something fishy about him. I halfway believed the explanation for his behavior he gives to Rowan at the beginning of the book. But then again, the book is named for him, so there must be something else going on... By the end of the book, you understand more about him, but not in a good way: I really started to dislike him.

The story is excellent. I really liked the beginning, with Rowan at the Annex, trying to get along with the townspeople, and organizing the books and searching for Slado. Halfway through the book, it went a bit more slowly for me, with Rowan (view spoiler) But in the end, it definitely picked up again when Rowan starts making her amazing discoveries. I'm definitely looking forward to the next book! show less

I love these books so much! I read the first two (compiled into one book) about a year ago. They're a celebration of science and exploration, in such a Star Trek meets fantasy novel meets mystery novel kind of way. The suspense centres on solving the mystery with our hero Rowan, while she tries stubbornly to do everything on her own while meeting awesome friends along the way who want to help. I can't reveal my favourite thing about this book without totally spoiling it, but if you liked the first two, this one's even better. It goes in a totally surprising direction.

I wasn't all that impressed by the first of this series, but by book three I'm a convert! Each one has been steadily better and this is the one where I crossed the line from, oh I'll read them if I happen to run into them to, Rosemary Kirstein goes on my list of authors to watch for.

I am really enjoying the way she gradually builds up your knowledge of the characters and the world in which they live, adding layer on top of layer, each layer altering by a little or a lot your understanding of what has gone before.

Her characterizations are getting so good too. I am loving the people. Just terrific stuff.

Yay Rosemary!

(Amy) Books going out of print is a matter of great annoyance to me. On the one hand, I fully understand the publishers' position on the matter - they can't hold on to books indefinitely just on the off chance that they'll sell another few hundred of them over the next X years - space is money, and inventory is often taxable, and blah, blah, blah. Nonetheless, from a loss-of-knowledge-is-bad standpoint, I can't help thinking that it's just a Very Sad Thing. (This is, actually, one of the uses I see for something like this - publishers can take their backlist out of physical inventory but keep it around for sale in e-book form or to be made into a physical book at point of sale by one of those widgets.)

Wow, that was a long digression. show more All that was to say that, despite the first two books being available in omnibus form, and the fourth book being still in print, the third is out of print, and so in order to read it after being left wanting More, Please by the first two, it had to be tracked down in used form. While this modest hurdle was far from enough to keep me from reading the book, it did delay my reading of it by some months, and not incidentally meant the publisher gets no money from me in this instance.

And did the book itself live up to the months of anticipation thus created? I would say so, yes. The eponymous lost steersman is found; more data as regards the nature of their world is collected, collated, and catalogued, though the breakthrough hypotheses are still beyond the protagonist's reach. (Which is good, incidentally, frustrating though it can be to read it. She's exceptional enough already to be able to notice and remark upon what she does; being able to fit the pieces together and end up with the answer that is stunningly obvious to the outside reader would tag her as the sort of genius only seen a bare handful of times in humanity to date, and I suspect that sort is not likely to make a particularly interesting protagonist.)

Also, more demons, which are shaping up to be Just Nifty.

Heartily recommended. Assuming you can find a copy.

And no, you can't have ours.
(http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/zenos-library/2009/02/the_lost_steersman_rosemary_ki.html)

(Alistair) In Which I Continue To Be Absurdly Laudatory About This Series.

'Cause, yeah, really, it is just that awesome. I've been pretty good, so far, at sticking to my rules about reading books in strictly the order my reading list specifies, and not deviating from it in order to ensure they all get read. Well, this is the sole book I've read so far that's made me deviate from this plan, and damned if I'm not going to do it again for the fourth book in this series, The Language of Power.

It's hard to say too much about the actual content of the book without spoilers - more so than with most books, because it's sufficiently unusual to present a much bigger problem than with most books. In fact, most of the things I might want to say about it, such as that it contains bar bs gur orfg-jevggra "svefg pbagnpg" fpranevbf V'ir ernq lrg, would constitute gross spoilage out of context.

Let it be said, therefore, simply that those things I said in my review of the previous pair of volumes in re good characters, good plotting, and Insanely Great worldbuilding more than continue to be true. Utterly recommended.

( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/cerebrate/2009/03/the_lost_steersman_rosemary... ) show less