From Amazon.com
Severna Park's first novel,
Speaking Dreams, was nominated for the Lambda Literary Award, which recognizes excellence in gay and lesbian literature. Park deftly avoids the forced mishmash of high-tech lingo that mars many other new ventures in science fiction. The slave culture she has created in
Hand of Prophecy comes to life in spare, harsh detail; the plot is driven with whiplash intensity.
Frenna is a slave, bred for bondage and injected with a virus that guarantees 20 years of youth while in servitude, followed by an agonizing death when the virus "Fails." After she discovers a way to survive Failure, she begins to throw off her inbred mantle of obeisance. She escapes from Olney, the slaver who owns her, only to find herself trapped, without allies, in a place more brutal than anything she's ever known. Troah, a deposed prophetess, takes an instant disliking to Frenna and immediately sets out to make life difficult for her, perhaps fatally so.
To survive, Frenna will have to conquer 1,000 years of genetically engineered complacency and find someone to trust in a world that seems utterly devoid of the good things that make us human. Hand of Prophecy is a compelling read--electric with fear, reeking of danger, and achingly realistic. --Jhana Bach
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Park's second novel is set in the same harsh universe as her first, Speaking Dreams (1992), which was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. Born on a frontier world once ruled by the Faraqui, now by the Emirate, Frenna has always done what she was told. Such is the way of her people, who shrug off bad events with a single word of fatalistic acceptance: troah, unavoidable hard luck dealt by the "fateful hand." Taken from her family at the age of 18 and enslaved on a distant world, Frenna has been injected with a virus that will keep her physically young for 20 years, then kill her. When Frenna learns how to beat the virus, she fights her inbred sense of troah and escapes with three doses of the cure, only to be caught by a Faraqui noble who puts her to work as a medic in the slave arenas of the planet Traja, where he's also left his troublesome prophetess sister (who calls herself Troah), to keep her from stirring up trouble. As if the gore of the fighting arenas and the threat of imminent military invasion aren't enough, Frenna must come to terms with troah: her own, and the embittered prophetess who has the ability to free slaves from the virus and who sees Frenna as a threat to her own fragile power. Park's latest novel expands the vision of its predecessor, delving deep into the hearts of people whose brutal mores and ambitions shield their all-too-human vulnerabilities. The writing is blunt and sure, deftly knitting together resonant themes of power and helplessness, bondage and freedom.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
