Hand of Prophecy (Hardcover)

by Severna Park (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Severna Park's first novel, Speaking Dreams, was nominated for the Lambda Literary Award, which recognizes excellence in gay and lesbian literature. Park deftly avoids the forced mishmash of high-tech lingo that mars many other new ventures in science fiction. The slave culture she has created in Hand of Prophecy comes to life in spare, harsh detail; the plot is driven with whiplash intensity.

Frenna is a slave, bred for bondage and injected with a virus that guarantees 20 years of youth while in servitude, followed by an agonizing death when the virus "Fails." After she discovers a way to survive Failure, she begins to throw off her inbred mantle of obeisance. She escapes from Olney, the slaver who owns her, only to find herself trapped, without allies, in a place more brutal than anything she's ever known. Troah, a deposed prophetess, takes an instant disliking to Frenna and immediately sets out to make life difficult for her, perhaps fatally so.

To survive, Frenna will have to conquer 1,000 years of genetically engineered complacency and find someone to trust in a world that seems utterly devoid of the good things that make us human. Hand of Prophecy is a compelling read--electric with fear, reeking of danger, and achingly realistic. --Jhana Bach

From Publishers Weekly
Park's second novel is set in the same harsh universe as her first, Speaking Dreams (1992), which was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. Born on a frontier world once ruled by the Faraqui, now by the Emirate, Frenna has always done what she was told. Such is the way of her people, who shrug off bad events with a single word of fatalistic acceptance: troah, unavoidable hard luck dealt by the "fateful hand." Taken from her family at the age of 18 and enslaved on a distant world, Frenna has been injected with a virus that will keep her physically young for 20 years, then kill her. When Frenna learns how to beat the virus, she fights her inbred sense of troah and escapes with three doses of the cure, only to be caught by a Faraqui noble who puts her to work as a medic in the slave arenas of the planet Traja, where he's also left his troublesome prophetess sister (who calls herself Troah), to keep her from stirring up trouble. As if the gore of the fighting arenas and the threat of imminent military invasion aren't enough, Frenna must come to terms with troah: her own, and the embittered prophetess who has the ability to free slaves from the virus and who sees Frenna as a threat to her own fragile power. Park's latest novel expands the vision of its predecessor, delving deep into the hearts of people whose brutal mores and ambitions shield their all-too-human vulnerabilities. The writing is blunt and sure, deftly knitting together resonant themes of power and helplessness, bondage and freedom.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 307 pages
• Publisher: Eos; 1st edition (March 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380976390
• ISBN-13: 978-0380976393
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,836,823 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Others have tackled this subject better, but worth reading, June 19, 2000

By	Julia Walter (Cobleskill, NY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Hand of Prophecy (Mass Market Paperback)

Maybe.

Other reviewers have given the gist of the plot, but I don't agree with their ratings, that's why I review this book. LeGuin in Four Ways of Forgiveness has written better about slavery and how it destroys the owned and owners.

Octavia Butler in The Kindred writes better about the sexual relationship in slavery between owned and owner. In that book there are outsiders who make it easier for us to empathize.

Many of Samuel R. Delaney's books are about unequal sexual relationships. I prefer his too.

I liked Hallie in this book, but Frenna was too distant, too strange, ultimately an unsatisfying hero, for me. Troah was too too scary to also be sympathetic, as I think she was supposed to be, eventually.

In my opinion, it is worth reading, if you don't expect too much from it. And you've read the others first.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 'Blade Runner' meets 'Spartacus' only 10 times better.., June 3, 2000

By	"tazzy26" (Bristol, South Gloucestershire United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hand of Prophecy (Mass Market Paperback)

I bought this book on the strength of its blurb alone, yet what the book contained blew all parameters of my expectations into orbit. I doubt if i've read a book that weaves the genres of sc-fi and action/romance/historical together so well.

Park's gender reversal (her trademark) gives light to some wonderful female characters; from Troah who is determined to exact her revenge on those who have betrayed her, to Hallie the blonde Amazonian warrior whose armour is as strong as her compassion (I've never been so worried over a character's survival when Hallie's fighting Rampage) and onto the protagonist herself Frenna who looks so fragile it seems she will break at any second but shows more determination than anyone else in the story. The whole slavery angle was addressed perfectly and leaves a thousand oppotunities for sequels or follow on stories.

Most importantly the whole love side of the novel was delivered in a way saying: 'it doesn't matter who you love as long as they love you'. We can see how that backfires for Althea and Leiban, and how despite the loyalty the boundaries of 'slave' and 'free' still dominate the lives of the characters in the book. This is good route on Severna's part because it stops love obstructing the slave/non-slave relationship and prevents a novel that balances passion with survival from turning into a 'love conquers all' romantic epic. Basically, this is one of the better books I've read this year and probably THE best sc-fi book I've ever read. Severna Park manages to combine strong characters, painful anticipation and occasionally obtuse humour to create a book that this reader won't be forgetting in a hurry.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I recommend this, liked it even better than Speaking Dreams., November 23, 1998

By	[e-mail] (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This is the second of her books that I've read -- perhaps there are only two. The first, "Speaking Dreams" I think is the name, takes place in the same universe and may even share a minor character. It is not necessary to read them in order, though having the first as background was surely helpful.

I liked this book more than the first. It seemed tighter, less grim, and I thought it had more appealing characters. It was a real page-turner and adrenaline-rusher, with a complex enough story to keep me from figuring out how it would come out. And the characters were believable, the dialogue reasonable -- in short, nothing got in the way of a very nice read.

One basic premise of the story is that slavery is somehow an accepted part of this future civilization, which otherwise is not too different from ours. There's a people that "developed" slavery with some genetic and biological aspects such as a virus that keeps a person from aging and enhances healing for twenty years, then kills the host when the virus runs out of steam. The slavers are now the pariahs, but the general structure of slavery remains, with a lottery feeding the slave population. This was a really scary idea: anyone in their late teens was eligible to be "selected", that is, turned into a slave and stripped of their rights and previous life, treated as property for twenty years, then to die a horrible death.

The other basic premise of the story is that there's a "cure" for the slave virus. This story follows various characters as the word gets out about this cure. It's easy to imagine a subsequent novel exploring the social consequences of this cure, and I'd love to see it.

This is kind of frustrating because all this says nothing really about the story or characters. There's a runaway slave who learns a lot about herself, her people, and her relationship with the slaver peoples over the course of the story. There's a fascinating description of a troupe of gladiator slaves, including the warrior Hallie who was my favorite. And there's the prophet herself, a very intriguing character. Tons of interesting, strong, complex, believable female characters. I recommend it.