With Faraqui slavers making deals with aliens to regain lost territory, Emirate forces both opposing and self-consciously bolstered by slaving (in social and economical realms), and aliens with their own agendas, this novel is certainly not lacking intrigue.

If this weren't enough, Park mixes a prescient protagonist into the soup, and manages to do so without spoiling the end. For this, I was grateful. I was also grateful for her dead-on prose, the gems that make a reading experience worth more than the cover price. For instance:

The sky was cloudless, a sharp, almost cutting blue, and it fit precisely over the little hills like a glass bowl.

Magnificent.

One caveat: propeller-heads will have to look elsewhere for their techno-jones. Very few details about FTL, transporter disks, or exotic weaponry exists in this ambitious first novel--the characters live in a world of advanced technology, but are mostly clueless as to this technology's inner workings. Although this breaks any number of "rules" of science fiction, it keeps the prose slick and fast, like a purposeful shark. (Besides, how many of us in the late twentieth century know every single working behind our automobiles and microwave ovens? Didn't think so.)

This strategy of steering clear of the technobabble slams home when Mira, the lifelong diplomat, watches with awe as Costa, her lover and slave, builds a fire in a snowbank. It serves as a sober reminder about how much we truly forget--about ourselves, about essential life skills, and about others--as we plow into the wide, dangerous, and sometimes unrewarding future.