Fenn's second novel combines two well-used tropes of the genre: the amnesiac outsider, and the backward colony world whose settlers come to a gradual understanding of their place in the scheme of things. Kerin, an outcast widow in a primitive patriarchal society, discovers an injured stranger on nearby moorland and nurses him back to health. Kerin is the mother of a "skyfool" son, whose telekinetic abilities are to be assessed by religious rulers; if found suitable, he will ascend to heaven. The novel charts Kerin's growing awareness that her world is not all it seems, the stranger's discovery of his identity and the corruption at the heart of the governing regime. It's an ambitious idea that is only partly successful; while the mutually dependent relationship between Kerin and the stranger is sensitively drawn, as is the depiction of a society kept in ignorance by a religious elite, the resolution is overexplained and the evil-doers are too sketchy to be wholly convincing.

 Eric Brown's novel Necropath is published by Solaris