The Outskirter's Secret [Mass Market Paperback]

Rosemary Kirstein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 24, 1992

Determined to learn the truth about the Guidestars--two points of light that hang motionless in the sky--Rowan sets out into the Outskirts, where barbarian tribes and the land itself could destroy her.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Rowan, the heroine of Kirstein's previous novel, The Steerswoman , continues her adventures in the second installment of this fantasy trilogy. After the first book, in which Rowan learned that wizards control the navigational satellites known as Guidestars, she sets off with her friend, the Outskirter named Bel, into Outskirter territory to locate a Guidestar that had crashed to the earth. While on her quest, Rowan fulfills her duties as a steerswoman, observing and recording all that she can of the medieval Outskirt world. On their journey, the pair overcomes goblins, barbaric warriors and inclement weather. The world Kirstein creates is captivating in its gritty descriptions and realistic culture: we learn, for example, that the nomadic Outskirters roll their bread from goat's entrails. The novel reads like a fantasy, but there are hints that Rowan's world was pre-dated by a more advanced society: perhaps the "magic" that the wizards use to control the Guidestars is some vestige of high technology. Though the plot wanders occasionally, readers will no doubt be pleased by this installment and eager for its sequel.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Del Rey (October 24, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345368851
• ISBN-13: 978-0345368850
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,572,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kirstein's Secret, February 25, 2001

By 

James D. DeWitt "Alaska Fan" (Fairbanks, AK United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Outskirter's Secret (Mass Market Paperback)

One of the major disappointments of the genre is the apparent abandonment of Rowan and Bel in the Outskirts. There was a sequel planned - I can find references to Ms. Kirstein's reading portions of it at science fiction conventions - but it doesn't seem to have ever been published. This book and its prequel, "The Steerswoman," are among my treasured paperbacks.

At the risk of giving 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 millenia, 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 millenia-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 those who would try to recover science and technology. Most residents in this world are technologically ignorant, unknowingly held in that state by the technocractic wizards.

The sorcerers grudgingly 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...

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 the schemes is increasingly urgent. Because one of the wizards is willing to use the infrared/burning tool 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.

Add to this meticulously crafted world and plot the vivid characters of Bel and Rowan, the logically consistent and believable cultures her world has spawned, and you have a wonderful story .... that is incomplete. It's half told. It's maddening.

I don't know if the problem is with Ms. Kirstein, her editor, her publisher or some combination of them, but this is a storyline that needs to be completed. Please. I'm begging...

Read and enjoy "The Outskirter's Secret" and "The Steerswoman." But be prepared to wait a long time, at best, for the rest of the story.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Two out of three?, February 4, 2001

By 

Mary Morgan "Albion" (England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Outskirter's Secret (Mass Market Paperback)

I have read both of Rosemary Kirstein's books and enjoyed them enormously. She has created wonderful characters out of which an exciting story naturally develops. She has also imagined a world which at first sight looks fantastical and at second seems to be based on very sound science (Rowan's deduction of the notion of how to get something into orbit is fascinating).

What troubles me about these books is that they are plainly part of a larger book which is unfinished. Many questions remain to be answered at the end of Outskirter's Secrets...and the main one *I* have is: what happened to Rosemary Kirstein? Why are two books of a (possible) trilogy all of her work we have to enjoy?

What happened next?

Inga

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing mix of fantasy and science fiction., June 7, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: The Outskirter's Secret (Mass Market Paperback)

Well developed characters in an interesting and plausible setting. The plot and pacing never lag, I read it in one sittting.

My only regret is that the previous book in the series "The Steerswoman" seems to be out of print, and the much needed sequel does not appear to have been printed yet!