Above the Lower Sky

Set in the first half of the next century when Native American tribes have seceded from the U.S. and Ireland has been united, Dietz's enthralling futurist tale knits together seemingly unrelated events: the brutal murders of humans and the slaughter of dolphins. In the Aztlan Free Zone in Mexico, where the tribes conduct diplomatic affairs, Thunderbird O'Conner, cultural attache to the Kituwah (Cherokee) Embassy, discovers the body of a vagrant who's been skinned alive. After extricating himself from police interest (here, Mounties are contract peace enforcers), he and his friend, Stormcloud Nez of the Dineh (Navaho) Embassy, investigate. Meanwhile, marine biologist Carolyn Mauney-Griffith, seeking to discover why killer whales are systematically decimating nearby dolphin pods, suffers a serious underwater accident and is declared dead; she comes back to life, however, in an ultramodern hospital. The mysteries intensify when Carolyn's brother, Kevin Mauney, arrives from Ireland and tells of a selkie murdered as he was disclosing a conspiracy against mankind and dolphins. Despite some clunky prose (and an overdependence on italics for emphasis) Dietz (Windmaster's Bane and the Soulsmith trilogy) offers some intriguing, if rather implausible, premises for a 21st-century culture. (Dec.)