Great Sky Woman.

Great Sky Woman by Steven Barnes One World/Ballantine Books, July 2006 $24.95, ISBN 0-345-45900-8

The latest offering from speculative fiction writer Steven Barnes is set in prehistoric Africa and is the first of two novels about the Ibandi, a tribe of hunter-gatherers. In this first installment, the Ibandi live in the plains near Mount Kilimanjaro. Frog Hopping, a boy, longs to become a great hunter. T'Cori, an abandoned girl, is apprentice to the tribe's medicine woman. After centuries of peaceful coexistence with other groups, the Ibandi face possible annihilation at the hands of the Herculean, genocidal Mk*tk. The survival of the tribe ultimately depends on Frog and T'Cori.

Great Sky Woman may have particular resonance for African American readers, helping us imagine the history (and prehistory) we lost when we were dragged to this land. But the novel doesn't just recall far-gone epochs. Given the genocide that has bloodied Africa in recent years, Great Sky Woman also speaks to our time.

No matter how much the world inside a fantasy or science fiction novel differs from our own, it is always similar in fundamental ways. After all, what writers of such books know about humanity and life, they know from riving in this world.

While Barnes manages his narrative rather well on a macro level, there are flaws at the micro level. Too often, he tells us what a character is feeling, rather than showing us: "All night and day ... she had felt her anxiety threaten to swirl out of control." Dangling modifiers and cliches trouble some of the sentences. There's also an inconsistency--at one point, Barnes forgets that Frog's stepfather has only one eye: "There was some hidden fire in Snake's eyes."

Despite these glitches, Great Sky Woman will not lose Barnes any fans. It will probably gain him some.

--Reviewed by Dana Crum