The legion of Otherworlds is steadily growing as the fantasy (ahem ... speculative fiction!) genre evolves.  While a few years ago you could blithely predict a seemingly ubiquitous "swords'n'sorcery" medievalist setting, now the cosmologies and world histories and social structures are as varied and imaginative as costumes at a Mardi Gras.

Usually, though, they are a little darker and (unless it is part of Terry Pratchett's Discworld) decidedly more serious.  The world in which Basilisk takes place is one of these - dangerous, threatened and oppressed.

Around a basic "boy from one side of the tracks meets a girl from the other side" situation is a desperate political struggle against a corrupt administration determined to use any means to keep its power.  And as the means requires using the girl to summon deadly monsters, things get very nasty.

Rej is a Comber, living in the heavily polluted catacombs under the city of Lunnzia.  Donna is an Abover, cloistered as a scribe working mindlessly for the Rulers fighting a losing war against some other city.  But those, and the other finely developed and intriguing details of life in Lunnzia, are really just the background against which Donna and Rej's journey of self- and mutual discovery are drawn.

Browne has resisted the temptation to let the story rely on the exotic setting for much of its momentum.  This is a personal journey by the two key characters and their thoughts, reactions, choices and decisions drive the plot towards its climax. They make discoveries, they make mistakes, they have to learn, and those elements keep the reader guessing from page to page.

This is a challenging fantasy story, and it is good.

Review by David Beagley

© 2004 David Beagley