Samantha Mills has a terrific mastery of her writing ability. To create multi-layered characters, a complex and fascinating world and tension-fueled action. Great dialogue too!

The story of Zenya who is born into a scholarly family: wants nothing more than to fly as a warrior of the mecha god and defend her polyglot home city of Rahdezdha. There are five alien sleeping gods whose presence is accessed by their Voice through a shimmering inter-dimensional portal: the creator god, the engineer god, the earth god, the scholar god, and the mechanics god. Of course, there are overlapping disciplines but each god has their staunch followers. An uneasy alliance among themselves is managed by the Council of Five.

The story starts when everything changes: Zemolai, renamed and now one of the elite flying warriors, has a moment of weakness when, on an unannounced inspection of a barracks, she finds one of the warriors has snuck in a figure representing the scholar sect: a gross violation to be severely punished. You cannot adhere to more than one god. Zemolais act of weakness/ kindness just starts off a maelstrom among the five groups of devotees and the city is plunged into chaos.

The center of the controversy is: are the gods really gods? Is their offerings of technology and science just a way of playing with the denizens of the city, having no real interest in their actual well-being? Should the people rely less on division and more on unity?

Zemolai is blindly devoted to her warrior superior Vondaya and does everything to please her; but she is not always successful. One punishment banishes her from her fellow warriors and Vondaya. But exile opens up Zemolai’s eyes and she reluctantly realizes that the way things are among the five sects, their hunger for power and dominance may be destroying the people they’ve been sworn to protect and educate.

This an intense tightly-wound watch spring of a novel: the action is relentless and engrossing.

A terrific mixture of characters and ideas.

Well done Ms. Mills! ~~ Sue Martin