Customer Reviews

And All Between: Green-Sky #2

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I read this book when I was in grade school and it has haunted me ever since. I have been on a quest - literally - since I was 11 years old to find this book again, along with the other 2 in the trilogy - for those of you who are also still looking the other two books are: Below the Root and Until the Celebration

This is a sophisticated, intricate, and very well-written series. It is too bad the author's works are no longer available, because everything she writes is gold.

This book overlaps the first book in the series, BELOW THE ROOT. It is told from the point of view of Teera, the Erdling child who was rescued by Neric and Raamo and taken to Green-sky. The book starts back at Teera's home in the caverns below "The Root" and shows how their society is marred by strife and hunger. The food allocation committee decides her pet lapan (something similar to a rabbit) must be killed and eaten for food. Teera, desperate to keep her pet, runs away from home and wanders down the endless corridors until she is hopelessly lost, then squeezes through an opening in the root into the forest above.

At first Teera is enchanted by the green forest and the abundance of food, but soon is full of homesickness. Just as she is about to give up hope, she is found by Raamo and Neric, novitiate Ol-zhaan priests from the cities of Green-sky high in the trees. Raamo can hear her telepathic cries for help, and also through telepathy (pensing) calms her enough for the trip up into the city of Orbora. There they place Teera in the care of Raamo's family, where she immediately forms a deep bond with Raamo's sister of the same age, Pomma.

Teera tries to keep the secret of her origins, but her hosts soon find out she is not a child from their city who fell, but was born and lived below the root. Raamo's fellow initiate, Genaa, learns that her father is not really dead, but was imprisoned below the root by the evil machinations of the secret society within the Ol-zhaan priests called the Greets-kel. When Genaa leads a party to the forest floor to make contact with the inhabitants of the caverns, chaos is let loose in Green-sky.

This is the sequel to Below the Root, although it does not begin where that left off. Instead, Teera's story is told from her perspective and that of the other Erdlings. The endpoint of the former book comes about halfway through this one, when the thread of narrative is picked back up from the perspectives of other characters. The players are gearing up to reveal the secret of the Erdlings and attempt to integrate them into Kinda society, but there are still those, such as D'ol Regle who will stop at nothing to prevent this.
With such fascinating world-building, well-developed characters, and a very suspenseful plot, Snyder once again proves she was doing Young Adult Fantasy before the genre was invented, and doing it very, very well.

I found this book in my public library when I was in my 'Zilpha Keatley Snyder Phase.' I had just read The Changeling (another excellent book by this author) and saw that this was set in the land of Green-sky (which is mentioned in The Changeling.) Not expecting much, I picked this up-and was totally overwhelmed when I begin reading it. Please, buy this book. You'll never regret it.