In this first book in her new Stratification series, Julie Czerneda returns readers to the science fiction wonderland she introduced in A Thousand Words for Stranger, her first novel in 1997. Reap the Wild Wind takes place early in the history of Cersi and the Om'ray, and the reader discovers that the numerous Om'ray tribes are confined to specific parts of their world. Meanwhile, the alien Oud race lives underground and the alien Tititik, which supply power cells to the Om'ray, dominate the swamps.

The Om'ray life revolves around two things: finding a Chosen love with whom to bond forever and harvesting and using dresel. For Aryl Sarc, only Bern Teerac will do as her Chosen. While the Om'ray use mental telepathy to communicate, Aryl's mother has special mental powers, and Aryl discovers that she has a special power too. She can push people into what she thinks of as a "dark place," an unknown dimension of some kind. During the dresel harvest, she pushes Bern into a "dark place" to save him from an alien device, and as a result, many Om'ray die, including her brother, and the harvest is ruined. The Om'ray must barter most of their dresel to the Tititik, and now they face starvation and possible extinction. If that were not enough havoc, Aryl's beloved Bern leaves to seek a different Chosen lifemate elsewhere.

But more important perhaps than all of these problems is the alien device itself. As readers familiar with Czerneda's first trilogy might guess, it comes from aliens known as humans.

A classic coming-of-age adventure

The first hundred pages of Reap the Wild Wind surge as quickly as the wild winds of M'hir. The pace is fast, the energy is high, and the world is fascinating. Julie Czerneda's descriptions of the rastis, the dresel and the alien Oud and Tititik races are all superb: detailed, creative and carefully drawn. She maintains a tight point of view from Aryl Sarc's perspective and then weaves a small parallel story into the novel from the tight viewpoint of another Om'ray character.

But it is Aryl who matters in this story, and she forms the backbone of a classic science fiction coming-of-age adventure. As is standard in this type of adventure, Aryl is smart, athletic, endowed with special mental powers and in love with one, and only one, boy. She needs to save her people, she needs to find and be with her one true love, and she needs to learn how to understand and control her emerging powers.

The drawbacks of the book are minor. For example, the notion of a pure love "forever" with one's Chosen feels a bit naïve and innocent for today's adult audience. As another example, the reader sees very little of the Oud and Tititik societies, though these aspects of the Cersi world may unfold in the second novel of the trilogy. Also, while the Om'ray are clearly a primitive culture, they seem to have no belief in higher powers such as gods. And finally, the humans all speak ("Seekers, we" and "Awful, is") as if they are Yoda from Star Wars.

But truly, these are minor nitpicks that barely distract from the strengths of Reap the Wild Wind. The prose is smooth, the details are beautifully drawn, and the aliens are both amusing and interesting. For a coming-of-age adventure in the classic science fiction sense, this novel delivers all the right elements.