A well-written story can go beyond the medium upon which it has been printed, be it a simple paperback, leather-bound treasure, or the electronic screen. What must always be constant, however, is to grip, draw, or tease the reader into the story and do not let them go, til the end. Akashan'te, I am please to say, delivers.

Rowyn, a child of virgin birth, was foretold in prophecy hundreds of hundreds of years before. She, of course knows nothing of this, but her Aunts, who are raising her, do. And now, on the day of her reaching her eighteenth birthday, she is sent innocently enough to go down to the nearest village and to the markets, just as she wished, all by herself. So begins the quest in Akashan'te.

Most fantasy traditions have a young person sent off on a quest that will help save or shape the world to come. It is a worn but comfortable formula for this genre, yet nonetheless, there is a freshness here, in part by Burkholder basing the culture’s roots more in the United States landscape than the more common European one. There is also a more relaxed feeling to the relationship between characters, also very much a part of the American culture than the class distinctions of old England. The result is a story that is light in the telling but layered with enough depth to also explore other meanings Burkholder reveals about the world around her.

 
Reviewed By: Nancy Louise
© September 2007