cover image SNARE

SNARE

Katharine Kerr, . . Tor, $27.95 (592pp) ISBN 978-0-312-89045-2

Popular fantasy author Kerr (the Deverry series) once again crosses genres to deliver a large-scale SF adventure, with crowd-pleasing results. Three very different groups of human settlers go, not all willingly, to the planet Snare: a band of Islamic fundamentalists, a group of horse tribes and the pragmatic Cantons people. All descend on Snare's indigenous reptilian species the ChaMeech, and eight centuries of territorial and social turmoil follow. In Kazrajistan, the despotic Gemet Great Kahn rules the followers of the Third Prophet, but a secret rebel organization led by Captain Idres Warkannan seeks to restore the rightful heir, Jezro Kahn, long assumed murdered by Gemet. Warkannan sets out to find Jezro with his nephew Arkazo and Yarl Soutan, a renegade Cantons sorcerer, who claims to be searching for the lost Ark of the Covenant, the settlers' original ship. Meanwhile, suspicious of Soutan and Warkannan, Gemet sends Zahir Benumar, one of his elite warriors, to discover their plans. In the guise of a disgraced soldier, Zahir joins a horse tribe led by the inquisitive Spirit Rider Ammadin, hoping to use the tribe as cover while he follows Soutan's trail. Matters grow more complicated when a ChaMeech named Water Woman asks Ammadin's help and tells her of a powerful sorceress named Sibyl, who may be the last link between Snare's inhabitants and their distant past. Though the ending falls a little flat, Kerr masterfully manipulates the converging plot lines. (Apr. 23)