All that background noise I gave out a few paragraphs up, you know the stuff about Herod and Jesus and the Hunger times? That was accumulated knowledge. Esther M. Friesner has never gives out all the background of this society at once. Bit by bit the reader is hinted into various aspects and histories. The world has turned screwy we know that. Each Stead is head up by a Pa figure who has lots of wives and lots of babies. A Pa is chosen by death. If a man likes what he sees he offers up a challenge and it's a wrestling mach to the death pass the popcorn. There's also a Head Crone title that is decided the same way except women can participate in this little knock out. Friesner gives out little bits of this world's holy book that bears a very remarkable similarity to the Christian bible except that it's all screwed up of course. Friesner gives out piece-by-piece information to the world forcing the reader to travel blindly across her world. It's wonderful really gives a bit of mystery.

Character development. Heard it all before eh? The thickness of a character, the realistic nature of a character, the unique dialogue aspects of a character hey I admit it's all been reviewed before. Anymore the only reason characterization should be mentioned in a review is if the writer has done something remarkably good or remarkably bad. Otherwise it's just another "The people in the book seemed so real!!!". Blah on that. Freisner gets the exceptionally good award. If you've hanged in this long with me you've realized that this civilization does some pretty awful stuff. Sick and nasty stuff. Leading characters do things that are repulsive totally immoral by most standards. Freisner's trick is that she's able to let you know why they did those things. Not sympathize, which is a useful trick of storytelling but gets rather old. No she lets you understand why these people do what they do. Each person has a depth and feeling to them that lets you know that they are not evil for evil but rather just living they way they are brought up in. Strong stuff that and difficult to pull off.