Above the Lower Sky - Hardcover

Set in the first half of the next century when Native American tribes have seceded from the U.S. and Ireland has been united, Dietz's enthralling futurist tale knits together seemingly unrelated events: the brutal murders of humans and the slaughter of dolphins. In the Aztlan Free Zone in Mexico, where the tribes conduct diplomatic affairs, Thunderbird O'Conner, cultural attache to the Kituwah (Cherokee) Embassy, discovers the body of a vagrant who's been skinned alive. After extricating himself from police interest (here, Mounties are contract peace enforcers), he and his friend, Stormcloud Nez of the Dineh (Navaho) Embassy, investigate. Meanwhile, marine biologist Carolyn Mauney-Griffith, seeking to discover why killer whales are systematically decimating nearby dolphin pods, suffers a serious underwater accident and is declared dead; she comes back to life, however, in an ultramodern hospital. The mysteries intensify when Carolyn's brother, Kevin Mauney, arrives from Ireland and tells of a selkie murdered as he was disclosing a conspiracy against mankind and dolphins. Despite some clunky prose (and an overdependence on italics for emphasis) Dietz (Windmaster's Bane and the Soulsmith trilogy) offers some intriguing, if rather implausible, premises for a 21st-century culture.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A hardcover debut from the author of numerous fantasy paperbacks (The Soulsmith trilogy, etc.). During a hurricane in Ireland, resident American writer Kevin Mauney is visited by a selkie (a were-seal), who conveys an urgent message requesting his presence in Aztlan Free Zone, Mexico. In Aztlan, meanwhile, Cherokee diplomat and native dancer Thunderbird O'Connor stumbles upon a dying man, skinned alive and abandoned on the beach. Also in Aztlan, Carolyn Mauney-Griffith, Kevin's biologist sister, investigates a baffling mass beaching of dolphins, who seem to have been attacked by killer whales. As Kevin hotfoots it to Aztlan, Thunderbird is assaulted by were-orcas clad in human skins, while Cary drowns--then, impossibly, returns to life. What's going on? Well, it transpires that rebellious young were-orcas have decided to attack humanity by first exterminating its allies, the dolphins; the latter's magicians have thought up a plan, involving the three humans, to combat the evil whales. Some readers--the younger and more credulous section of the audience--may find the snappy, briny antics here exhilarating; the far-fetched multiplicity of were-things will strike many others as just plain daft. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.