Customer Reviews

The Lost Steersman

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Finally, the third book in the Steerswomen series! It has been almost 11 years since "The Outskirters Secret," the last book in this remarkable series. It was probably worth the wait, at least if we don't have to wait ten years for the next volume.

At the risk of spoilers, imagine a world that's nearly uninhabitable by man, filled with plants and animals inimical to earthkind. Now imagine a program for the terraforming of that world, a program that will take centuries if not millennia, involving first infrared bombardment by satellite and the burning of the borderlands, then sowing a genetically engineered plant that serves as a transition to earth life, and then a succession of increasingly earth-like plants.

After hundreds or thousands of years, in the areas treated first, the land is pretty much indistinguishable from earth; at the borders, life is strange and harsh. Most of the planet is apparently unchanged. Different peoples and cultures inhabit the various zones as the millennia-long terraforming proceeds.

To make things stranger still, those with knowledge have made themselves sorcerers and wizards, wielding technology when and how it suits them, quarreling among themselves and extirpating ordinary people who try to recover science and technology. As a result, most residents in this world are technologically ignorant, unknowingly held in that state by the technocractic wizards. Most humans think technology is magic, in a neat reversal of Clark's Law. Everyone but the wizards is completely unaware this is an alien world.

The sorcerers tolerate a band of Socratean scholars, the Steerswomen, who have re-developed principles of logic and serve as explorers, historians and cartographers. They mingle with the people of this world, operating by two rules: they will answer any question you ask, provided that you answer the questions they ask you. If you refuse to answer a Steerswoman's question, they shun you. It works pretty well... Sometimes a steerswoman - and some steerswomen are men - quits the order. They are said to be "lost."

But the wizards have their schemes, and as Rowan the Steerswoman struggles to understand them with the help of Bel, an outskirter, a member of one of the tribes on the fringe of the terraforming, the importance of understanding those schemes is increasingly urgent. Because one of the wizards is willing to use one of the terraforming tools in the satellite system to burn terraformed lands, and it is a terrifying weapon. The same wizard has caused one of the satellites to crash, at what jeopardy to the terraforming product we don't yet know.

It is fascinating to watch Rowan struggle to understand the issues and her situation, to see her begin to grasp that the world she knows is not the world on which earthkind evolved. With her, we are ignorant as to the wizards' motives, but we can understand better than her the risks their actions are creating.

The first two novels led to the conclusion that one of the wizards had set out to sabotage the terraforming process and, incidentally, to kill Rowan and Bel. This new novel tells of Rowan's efforts to find that mysterious wizard, and centers on the life that is native to this world. What if there is an intelligent alien species inhabiting this world? What if the terraforming process is destroying that alien intelligence? And Kirstein's aliens are truly alien; you will not mistake them, in the words of Alex Panshin, for someone from New Jersey. And all the while, there is the lost steersman of the title, who may be lost in more ways than one.

This is an excellent story. Wonderful, vivid characters are set in a plausible, complex world, with characters who struggle to understand the things that they encounter. Complex, unpredictable plots. Some reviewers have described these stories as fantasy; they are not. They are science fiction, and exceptionally well-conceived science fiction. These novels are genuinely new approaches to ideas. Highly recommended.

But please, Ms. Kirstein, can we have the next story a little sooner?

The Lost Steersman (2003) is the third novel in the Steerswoman series, following The Outskirter's Secret. In the preceding volume, Rowan and Bel discover that the wizards are keeping the Outskirts under surveillance. One of the wizard's agents tells them everything he knows, including information on the upcoming Routine Bioform Clearance. Rowan and Bel lead the Outskirter tribes in a wild flight to safety.

In this volume, Rowan has returned to the Inner Lands, staying at the Annex in Alemeth in hopes of discovering more information about Slado. She finds the resident Steerswoman, Mira, to be recently deceased and the Annex left in a confused mess. While Rowan starts organizing the books into some semblance of order and searching for magic events that are not connected to known wizards, she finds herself being unfavorably compared to Mira.

To her surprise, Rowan also finds Janus, the lost Steersman, residing in Alemath. He stills insists that he has resigned and that he can't -- or won't -- talk about his experiences. Janus has been put under the Steerswomen's Ban by Ingrud, a former friend, because of his refusal to answer her questions about what happened to him, but Rowan thinks that she may be able to get him reinstated. Then the demons show up in Alemeth.

This novel is a worthy successor to the first two tales. Rowan has to deal with an almost overwhelming string of new experiences that run counter to her own beliefs. We are kept in suspense to the end of the tale (which had better have a sequel) and are shown first hand why Rowan is a good Steerswoman.

I have only one peeve about this story: the lack of romantic interest. Will Rowan ever find, and keep, a man or woman to become her partner? She finds plenty of people who could be close friends, but always falls for the wrong man, and she keeps being separated from Bel, who has rapidly become her closest friend.

Recommended for Kirstein fans -- who have long awaited it -- and for anyone else who enjoys tales of exotic societies, alien plants and animals, and a restless urge to see the other side of the hill.

-Arthur W. Jordin

This is the third in the Steerswoman series. As with the first two, the writing is beautiful and the story is both thoughtful and interesting. These are intelligent books, easy to read; the characters are funny, smart, and tough in their own ways.

Usually I have trouble with books based in the future that depict people's return to magical ways of thinking. This one, however, makes sense. Everything happens for a reason; there is a structure that functions very well. There is nothing gratuitous about the story, or the society; everything has it's reason. The conflict set up for the next book isn't a physical war, although that might happen as well; it's a conflict of morals and behavior.

Rowan the Steerswoman is come to the Archives, looking for a man whom she has never seen. She has only his name and ocupation: he is the head wizard, the commander of the magic that shapes their world. The Archives are a secondary repository for copies of all the collected knowledge of the Steerswomen and men. The old keeper has died. The archives are a complete mess. Rowan has spent too long on strange roads in strange places, and no longer understands how to deal well with the normal people of her world. And the lost Steersman, the lost friend, is found again; but he is already under ban for not answering a Steerswoman. His answers are strange and raise as many questions as they put to rest... Then things from the outer lands are seen in the inner lands.

Anything else I say will be a spoiler, and you don't want this lovely book spoiled.

As a writer, I find I have trouble even finishing someone else's book because, too often, I'm thinking how it could have been better. This is one book that made me settle back and enjoy. It's been a long time since I read something so delightful! Yes, from a series standpoint, it goes in a different direction, but what a fun trip! Kirstein's level of invention is extraordinary, and she constantly finds new ways to explore this world. If you've been looking for a sense of wonder, here it is.

I am intrigued by the tension she sets up between the reader (who knows all about science fiction concepts) and Rowan ( who is discovering the truth about her world). Some of the things so mysterious to Rowan seem fairly obvious to me, but part of the fun is wondering how and when she will come to understand them.

Characters are vivid and intriguing as ever, and this book includes some moments when I laughed out loud. Also, one of the best alien first-contact scenarios I've ever read.

I discovered the Steerwoman books only recently with the publication of this one; this is a great set of books and I certainly hope it won't be too long before the next one. Yes, this isn't the final book and doesn't take Rowan in the direction we expected, but the story does continue!

This is not genre work at all but rather a great set of novels witha great plot, a fascinating backdrop, and real human characters. I highly recommend it!

Kirstein sets up more mystery than gets solved, but it is ever so worthwhile to get there! Great characters, excellent world, and the deepening of various mysteries just makes everything more fascinating.

And the alien contact part is a wow all of its own.

Can hardly wait for the next book!

... which doesn't mean I hated it. I was ecstatic to see that the sequel to The Outskirter's Secret had finally come out after all these years. And I still love Rowan and the world she lives in. But the path she goes down in this story does not lead where she thought it would, and where I have been waiting all these years to go. This kind of feels like a "middle book"; the discoveries Rowan makes are sure to complicate things in the future, but she is really no closer to resolving the conflict with the wizards that was left hanging at the end of the second volume.

This is a wonderful series! I read the three books all together; and, therefore, did not have to wait years and years in between like others did. Ms. Kirstein writes the Steerswoman into some great adventures, and those "one-liners" that she throws in had me laughing out loud and asking the closest family member to read that paragraph. Wasn't it fun to see Steffie start to think like a Steersman? I highly recommend these books and hope there are more to come. The situation with the demons left a bad taste in my mouth. And what about Slado?

On a world where man made satellites orbit the sky, humanity has developed to a medieval level. Steerswomen are taught how to gather knowledge and spread it to all that are interested. Rowan has discovered that the wizard Slado is using a magical spell known as the Routine Bioform clearance to rain down invisible heat on the Outskirts. If he continues to do so, the outskirters will spread into the Inner Lands and the two societies would then be at war.

In hopes of stopping Slado, Rowan travels to the Annex in the town of Alemeth hoping to find a clue hat would help her locate the wizard. She discovers a disgraced steersman who explains why he quit the guild. Not long after that, Slado's minions from the Outskirters start appearing and kill anyone whom gets in their way. Only Janus has a magical talisman that can hold these creatures off but he is captured and taken away by boat to what Rowan believes is Slado's lair, in an unexplored part of the planet. Rowan follows Janus, using his notes and charts to guide her but when she arrives at her destination, she finds something truly terrifying being perpetrated that she must find a way to stop.

THE LOST STEERSMAN, the sequel to THE STEERSWOMAN and THE OUTSKIRTER'S ESCORT raises more questions than it answers. There is bound to be at least one more book in this exciting series about a world where science is considered magic, yielded by wizards who are actually scientists. Rosemary Kirstein given the reader a colorful and detailed look at the protagonist's world, one filled with wonder and things waiting to be discovered.

Harriet Klausner

I love the Steerswoman books, but I have found this third entry in the series to be quite different in tone from the others. The latter half is almost a vision quest, and it's really challenging in a back-half-of-The-Two-Towers kind of way. But ultimately it's extremely rewarding.