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Tine is detective, bureaucrat, family member, an Active agent of the Interplanetary Criminal Investigation Bureau on a planet with no crime and a physiological barrier to travel or immigration. Tine is also a monster: a hooved, troll-like person looked down upon by any of the galaxy’s aesthetes who even know that his people, the Caliban, exist at all. When his boss sends him, at Tine’s great personal cost, to investigate a disappearance on a planet renowned for the beauty of its dreamweavers and the dreams they create, Tine is an intruder in Paradise: ugly, base, fallible, vulnerable, principled–and ultimately forced to go far beyond his mandate to solve the crime and bring about some semblance of Justice. Or he might die trying, an exile despised by almost all around him.
Lorina Stephens’s scientific detective fantasy is an allegory of a person out of place who brings their anchor with them in the form of deep strength and clarity of character. Tine, the monster who can be nothing else but his pure Self, is brought face to face with Others whose selves prove to be masking the monstrous. Justice, we discover, requires cleverness, understanding and sacrifice–and Tine the Caliban must exert all three beyond his utmost in his journey toward the truth. In the process, both Tine and the reader re-assess what is ugly and what is beautiful, what is dross and what is worthy.
