At the end of the previous book we left Oy and the four of his friends who had managed to escape from the evil Jeopardine, to whom they were effectively enslaved, having landed in a new country, not knowing whether the people were friendly or if they’d landed from the frying pan of Duldred into the fire of a different situation.
The gentle people of Nondula take in the waifs and all seems well. The waifs all lose the starved look they’d arrived with, after years of neglect and abuse at Duldred in Affland, except for Linnet, whose health fails and nothing seems able to help her.
In Nondula, each person is helped to find their own particular talent or jenie and so work is done by the people best fitted to the job and who enjoy it. After some time to rest and play, each of the waifs finds their jenie and so Oy discovers his gift for healing.
In contrast to the gentle Nonduls, the neighbouring Fellun people are thuggish, violent and cruel. They take whatever they want from the surrounding land and peoples, including the Nondulan healers, but there are none left. In a bid to try and find what is needed to heal Linnet, Oy gives himself up to the Felluns, but it seems it was not such a good plan. Gritty uses her jenie to win a place in the dance troupe and get inside the city to try to rescue him, but working out who she can trust to help her isn’t straightforward.
It took us a little while to get into the book, but once inside the picture Ana Salote builds of the contrasting communities, traditions and peoples is rich and colourful. As was the case with Oy Yew, the vocabulary she creates is wonderfully inventive and evocative. There are the awful terrorgations, as well as the husbouts where the Fellund husbeaus compete to win the favour of the ruling Fellona, Abominata, before inevitably falling out of favour to become a husbeen. These are contrasted with the Sajistry where the Nondulan scholars live and work and where the waifs find out what their jenies are.
As we finished reading, my children were already asking when the final book in the trilogy is due to be published, and, like them, I’m looking forward to finding out the answers to the numerous questions that we’re left with about Oy and his friends.
You can get your hands on a copy (and of Oy Yew) here.
