This book is different. Different to what? Different to how I imagined it was going to be. I set out thinking: 'fantasy'.

I cut my fantasy teeth on JRR Tolkein, romped through Stephen Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and feasted on Raymond Feist's Riftwar series and then . . . and then I lost my appetite for 'fantasy'. So it was with some trepidation I took up Skyseeker Princess.

But Skyseeker Princess isn't about yet another unlikely hero (or small band thereof) holding out against insuperable forces of gathering evil. It is far more nuanced than that. Rather, it seems to me, Skyseeker Princess is a parable about human behaviour; how we are capable of acts of individual kindness and cruelty and how, as a group, we can despise and persecute another group for no other reason than 'this is what we've always done', all the while apparently oblivious to our interdependence, one group upon another.

I am at risk here of making the book sound like a ponderous morality tale which it most certainly is not. No, Miriam Verbeek has conceived and brought to life a unique and wonderful set of characters, in an extraordinary setting, and has rendered it all in a beautiful narrative which makes it hard to put down.

So, why only four stars? To me four stars is reserved for an excellent book. Five stars is held in reserve for the truly outstanding. I've read Mann-Booker winners that I wouldn't give five stars. This is an excellent book.