The story begins on the planet Harmony, in the city of Basilica. Harmony is a human colony world, with human civilisation having flourished on this world for 40 million years. It has flourished because mankind has been denied the opportunity to develop ways of annihilating themselves on a large scale.

When Earth was on the verge of being destroyed, ships were sent out to begin again on a fresh world. But to prevent the same disaster happening again all colonists were genetically altered, so that a controlling computer called The Oversoul could ensure all technologies that could lead to massive destruction were avoided.

This leads for an interesting world, for although there are still computers and other technologies, which we would recognise as modern or futuristic, there are no means of fast travel on this world. The logic being that if you cannot deliver destructive weapons across large distances quickly then large-scale devastation cannot happen. Local small wars do happen but mankind lacks the ability to escalate these conflicts.

The problem is that the Oversoul is failing, its control is no longer absolute and the threat of war on a more global scale begins to become a possibility.

Against this background this book effectively tells the story of one of the families of Basilica, and their own internal warring. Nafai is the youngest son of the Wetchik, one of the leading citizens of Basilica. Together with his elder brother, the crippled Issib, Nafai has discovered the truth of the Oversoul's failing – and so the Oversoul has confided in him and Nafai commits to aiding the Oversoul.

This leads to strife in Nafai's family- most noticeably between him and his eldest brother, Elemak.

This is a book I never intended to read – there's far too many other books sitting on my to-be-read mountain, and this book is book one in a five book series. Now, the reason I never intended to read this is that I find Orson Scott Card's writing addictive, and so always ran the risk of being sucked into reading all five.

Secondly, despite the premise that this book is set far in the future on another planet seeded from Earth it felt as though it would be more akin to a fantasy novel the sf – and sf is far more my thing.

The problem is I needed a friendly book to take with me on a recent flight to Ireland and this was the first I grabbed. Then I quickly found that this is very addictive. The story itself is not the reason for this quality, it's good but it alone would never hook anyone.

The two parts of this novel that do hook the reader are the wonderfully imagined world of Harmony, and the intricate politics of Basilica, and the writing style itself. Card's style is wonderfully comfortable. This is one author I have always thoroughly enjoyed reading, and he has reeled me in again – annoyingly so as it will mean I know have four other books to read before I can get back to the books I feel I should be reading.