In times of crisis, human beings tend to discard the trivial and seek core truths which give meaning to existence above, below and around the daunting, moment's circumstance. Tathea, a deposed and exiled Empress of a fictional Eastern country, has lost everyone and everything she treasures. Escaping in the agony of seeing her small son's brutally murdered body, she asks the proverbial questions, "Why? What does this mean?" Thus begins her journey to whatever answers life offers.

Tathea's story is a celebration of life's most sacred essence. Fantastic scenes of "...the death of Allomir, the desolation of Parfyrion's loveliness and hope, the terrible, destructive power of the sea in Bal-Eeya, the Land of the Great White Bear with its fellowship of courage beyond hope, all the passion and tenderness and terror of this whole journey of the heart" fill the beginning pages of this most unusual novel. This reviewer could not help associating these tense and exotic events with the classical journey of the Greek hero, Odysseus, in The Odyssey.

The second half of the novel poses the sharing of "the Book" Tathea finds and knows she is to share with the world, the "Book" of answers resonating in every fiber of her being. As she learns and experiences its core, others begin to seek her understanding. This part of the novel tends to drag quite a bit, yet the challenges of this sharing keep the reader intrigued even while its quick pace annoyingly slows almost to a crawl. Evil typically opposes every attempt of goodness to reign supreme, and this journey is no different; however, the appearances of evil are so quickly defeated as to defy belief.

Every reader, however, will be totally engrossed in the tenets of "The Book", never named as any particular religious, philosophical or psychological school of thought or experience. Perry apparently wrote this novel while learning about and joining the Mormon Church. Without knowledge of this major religious denomination's particular teachings, this reader rapidly turned the pages while reading and acknowledged that there is something special here. Alternating between reliance on one's own self and the higher power within one's life journey, the novel concludes with the contents of Tathea's "Book".

While the characters lack depth and the sermon-like expositions might temporarily annoy a reader, there is something commanding herein that may not be ignored or discarded.

Perry, the renowned author of the acclaimed Thomas and Charlotte Pitt Victorian mysteries, might definitely agree with Samuel Smiles', "We learn wisdom from failure much more than success. We often discover what will do by finding out what will not do; and probably he (she) never made a mistake never made a discovery."