Picked this up a while ago as an Australian fantasy debut: Can healing defeat the sword? In seasons long past, twin gold-eyed princes sundered a kingdom. Rejecting his twin brother's warrior ways, Kasheron established a community deep in the southern forests. Forgotten by the outside world and protected by the trackless trees of Allogrenia, Kasheron's Tremen community has flourished, with his legacy of peace and healing upheld generations on. But now the forest has been breached by hostile intruders ... Fighting and bloodshed follow, testing even the skills of Kira, the greatest of all Tremen Healers. As well as sharing Kasheron's gift for healing, Kira has inherited his golden eyes and inspirational qualities - she, too, is seen as a leader amongst her people. As the attacks upon the Tremen become more violent, Kira is faced with a terrible dilemma. Should she stay and risk the annihilation of her community, or set out on a perilous journey north to seek aid from their long-lost warrior kin?

 The quotes strike me as less than exuberant: "An enthralling story with characters you care about" - Van Ikin.  However, it's a fairly entertaining read. The writing is engaging, with a clear, strong voice and very few grimace-worthy sentences. Nikakis doesn't waste time re-telling stuff we already knew, explaining things in dialogue or informing us about the intricacies of her made up herb lore. The characters are, though not particularly vivid, at least likable, and their dilemmas (mostly) sympathetic. The dialogue has the occasional archaic phrasing for no apparent reason ("What mean you?") and the semi-omniscient narrator jumps characters without indication a little too often, but on the whole, it's a well-crafted piece of writing.

Unfortunately, it falls down pretty much everywhere else. Remember when I was talking about eyes that change colour being a What Not To Do? Oh yes, our main character Kira has green eyes that flash gold whenever she's excited / angry / happy / enthusiastic / falling out of a tree. Most of her emotions are conveyed through the fact that her eyes flashed gold. There's no given explanation for physically why they should do that, nor does anyone else seem to think it particularly freaky, even though nobody else does it. It is, however, the centre of a prophecy of a people living elsewhere, so I guess that makes it okay.

No, it doesn't. It makes the book feel like it was written by a teenager. Most distracting author-error ever.

That's not the only problem, either. It's the first in a series, but it's not a series. It's a three volume novel. The end of this book does not close any of the open threads. We open with a day-in-the-life-of, then see bad things start happening, and Kira get morose. Bad things keep happening, Kira gets morose. More bad things happen. Kira realises it's probably all her fault, and mopes some more. She makes some breakthroughs with this whole healing business, carefully makes herself redundant to her people, and spends the rest of the novel deliberating whether she should stay or go. And by the rest of the novel, I mean the last third of the book.

That's not a story. Nothing has been resolved - the bad things are still going to happen, Kira as a character hasn't actually changed internally at all - no growth. There's nothing to give satisfaction to the reader for following through on the book.

Not-really-spoiler warning - she decides to leave. I say not-really-spoiler because if the author has set up two choices, and one of them retains the status quo (staying with her people) then she has to choose the other one. But her plan is frankly idiotic. She's going to leave her people so the attacks stop, but she has to leave in such a way that the attackers - who are coming after her, specifically, don't know that she's gone. The attackers aren't psychics, they're just trying to kill someone with gold eyes, which they do by hunting down anyone who looks femalish.. So if they're only going to not attack if they think you're not there, but you're not going to let them know that you've gone, how is that going to help anybody? Oh, and by the way, you're also in fact now the Leader of your people, as well as the most accomplished healer who ever lived, and you didn't bother about appointing a successor when there is no one who can just step into your shoes. Well done. That's definitely thinking for your people.

Aside from plot idiocy, the book suffers from severe Planet of Hat-itis, and very sparse worldbuilding. There are two kinds of people (well, there are more, but they're not in this book). The Manly Manly Warriors and the Tree Huggin' Hippies. The MMW's are a tribal farming and hunting culture living on the plains, the typical savages with their Sky Chiefs and their heirarchies. Killing is good, honour is everything, blah blah nothing new there. They're superstitious, aggressive - the ignorant savage that fills in the plot for any fantasy novel when the author couldn't come up with something original.

The THH's are basically elves without pointy ears, living in and off a massive forest large family communities. Killing is bad, meat is murder, revere all life, we can heal anything, yada yada. The actual structures they live in also go completely undescribed the entire novel, leaving the reader with absolutely no visualisation for anything that takes place in the forest.

The clash of those cultures is cliched, and Nikakis brings nothing new to that mix.

I was, overall, disappointed - Nikakis shows a very promising skill with the written word, but the book's just so generic and at points moronic that it really doesn't do her justice. With a book that had an actual story within it and some more thorough worldbuilding, I think Nikakis could be a strong voice in Australian fantasy.

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