Synopsis: The sequel to Odin’s Voice follows Odinstoy, her son, and Affie to Mars. Odinstoy’s subversive message causes a sensation, while Affie craves the status and respect to which she thinks she is entitled. Falling under the spell of a follower of the rival temple of Zeus, Affie tells him secrets which place Affie, Odinstoy and Odinsgift in terrible danger.

Review: Arriving on Mars, Odinstoy finds a devoted following, though her championing of ‘bonders’ (slaves) is divisive. Her radicalism and her ambiguous gender provoke the reactionary archpriest of the Church of Mars, Zeuslove Thatcher (his surname and the established church signal evident political and religious satire). When Odinstoy proclaims that Mars will have its own goddess, Mother Mars, and that the god Odin is the father of her son, her fate is sealed. ‘If you read my books, I warn you, there won’t always be a happy ending,’ Susan Price has said, and there is a hypnotic inevitability to the outcome of Odin’s Queen. Conspired against and betrayed, Odinstoy also knows her own god Odin is treacherous.

The second instalment of the Mars trilogy maintains ambiguity about Odinstoy’s gift – she can work an audience and is skilled at cold reading, and yet the accumulation of ‘coincidences’ shake even Affie’s lack of faith. Affie, who thinks she has an innate right to attention and pampering, and Odinstoy, who subjects Affie to flashes of violence, are not sympathetic characters, but even so the novel exerts a strong pull through skilled plotting and fascinating exploration of ideas.

2007-10-20