#AMBERLIGHT BOOK SYLVIA KELSO FULL#

Catching the back of my smock, she grunted again as Two sparked at her, however mildly.

I ducked between her shin and the swinging door and she grunted as she mis-stepped clear of me. The council-room latch was beyond my reach, but Zuri, Trouble-head and hence perpetually belated, was the last person in.

#AMBERLIGHT BOOK SYLVIA KELSO FULL#

So she had pushed us into the council room after that mirror-signal came: double urgent, passed up from the River at Marbleport, triggering a full council, Telluir House and Iskarda village both. Learning to speak, my word-hoard already a prodigy, though Two understood far more than I. I tried to explain that to my father Sarth, when in human time I was just three. So for our first five years in human time, Dhasdein to me remained some fabulous insect empire, ruled by the most glorious flying creatures of them all. When I was old enough to place the word, Two gave me an image to match: insects like jewelled daggerettes darting, hovering above water, glittering scarlet, glistening lapis lazuli, and the gauze shimmer of their wings. “Prince? The man’s a blighted dragonfly!” more to a prince than that?” My father Alkhes’ plosive consonants, clinching home the broad Quetzistani “a”:

It comes first in a rare snippet from within my cradle: my mother’s quick, slightly burred Uphill Amberlight accent, its vibrations familiar from the womb. And even before we could speak aloud, the recollections of this flesh involve that name. But I need human terms to measure space and interval, to divide Two’s memories from those of my own flesh and blood. Small wonder, since my mother estimates Two’s memory runs for seven centuries and more, back to the founding of the oldest House of Amberlight. I say human time, though Two grows impatient with such words as “years” and “human,” especially where we are concerned. Yet when the crown prince of Dhasdein first crossed our path in the flesh, by human time I was already twelve years old. His nickname is woven through my life’s oldest memories. Many more thanks to the ever-patient Carla Coupe, a model among editors, and to Chris Howard for matching patience over the cover art. (Nov.Cover art copyright © 2017 by Chris Howard Kelso’s self-consciously overwrought verbiage (“Crafters’ coats and cloaks festoon the pearl-grime”) distracts from an otherwise intriguing exploration of sexual politics and the difficult calculus of leadership. As Tellurith comes to see and question the rampant poverty and bias in Amberlight, she opens a furious debate over the Houses’ responsibility to make sure qherrique is used wisely at home and abroad. As Tellurith’s household nurses the stranger back to health, he reveals the terrible truth about the nearby rulers who purchase qherrique statuettes from Amberlight and use them to enslave people and wage war.

When a male Outlander is found on the streets of Amberlight, robbed, raped and left for dead by a girl gang, the qherrique informs Tellurith, the powerful head of Telluir House, that he must be kept alive. ) paints a hypnotic but prose-drowned portrait of a complex matriarchal society powered by “qherrique,” a semisentient stone that can control minds and power machinery.