Have you ever envisioned a world of your own? Perhaps just a daydream of something you wish you could have? In My Fair Lady the song Wouldn't It be Loverly spoke of such a thing: a world away from the current cold streets of London. It is from here that science fiction author Arryn Heath makes another leap.

"What if humans were part of a community of space faring beings?" is how Arryn Heath takes that thought of “what if” and leads us on a trip to the dark side of such an idea populated with persistent hope; the kind of hope that keeps the human race alive against overwhelming odds. Where humans designed to be slaves on one ship suddenly and mysteriously die.
 
Crash landing, the humans seek shelter elsewhere, a deep place underground. There are stories that have been passed down the generations that live in the Forever Dark, about a place of bright light in Beyond. To keep the memory alive, some are able to access in their genes the memories of the first people to come below.
 
 Dwinn Somuron is a female who refuses to bow down to the feudal nature of their collective society. She dresses as a hunter and wears her hair long. Both such actions are illegal and both she and the town she lives in can receive harsh punishments. Women are for breeding and little more is the common wisdom of this world. Dwinn, however remembers the words of her Grandmother and others about Beyond, a world above the Forever Dark down below.
  
Dismissed for centuries as myth by most of the colonist who live in the Forever Dark, Dwinn's people, stolen by the Hartaks, who become their slave masters to work in the mines. They were bio-enhanced to enable them to remember how to do specific tasks. Some were engineers, some healers, some birthing and childcare, and other ways were used to make training them almost unneeded. This was done by way of genetic memory. Dwinn, being female, believes that women can also have genetic memory, beyond that of the birthing and raising of children. The politics and the law of the land however, believe just the opposite. 

Her family line has been the one who has kept the memory and the desire to see 'Beyond' or what some believe is a place outside, full of light.  It is a memory that she believes is crucial in the escaping of Forever Dark to Beyond. The only thing stopping her is an evil man who will stop at nothing to stamp out her linage, and a civil war she wants nothing to do with, but she needs to get to the wall of the castle in order to get to Beyond.

As the Daughter of the Stone, Dwinn is driven by desires even she does not understand, seeks a way  to succeed in her dream while helping a man who became her husband to protect her, and to complete his dream of peace.

Daughter of the Stone draws upon early medieval times as a structure for how this society operates, but with none of the courtly graces, or poetry we sometimes connect with such times. Instead, it is as if humanity has been literally sent back to such times. Former slaves with genetic skills for the Hartaks were not skilled, nor taught in the areas of government, or civilization. The science in here is basic and this is more of a social study of what would happen to a group of humans in such a place as the Forever Dark. Indeed it shows that humans would become the basic rough creatures we all know ourselves to be, but with some saving examples that always seem to come to the fore to preserve us. Daughter of the Stone is a good and thoughtful book.

The second book, Child Of The Mist is now available at the same URL.
 
Reviewed By: Nancy Louise
© March 2008