On the world of Myr the planet-wide priesthood/governing body known as the Shemari leads the faithful in praise of the god Herrukal from their mountain stronghold. Little do the people of Myr, or even the Shemari themselves, for that matter, realize that their prayers and exultations do, in fact, reach their destination. The Gods exist. Herrukal and his court are aware of everything that transpires on Myr. And Herrukal has seen the beginnings of something that does not please him.

Eons ago, as punishment for an act of defiance, Herrukal instantly annihilated six sister-deities known as the Nelufi. Now, their souls have been reborn, unknowingly pulled down out of the void and placed in the form of the Swarms, giant, dragonfly-like creatures created through alchemical means by the Shemari. The Swarms serve as mounts for the Shemari’s quasi-military branch, the Bakkujasi, also known as Swarm Riders, who are charged with investigating and putting down rebellion and heresy throughout the nations of Myr.

Each Bakkujasi is linked with his or her Swarm; the only ones who can communicate with and control the creatures. That is until Simeon, the young son of a Rider named Veda, witnesses an impossible occurrence.

Known to his friends by the nickname Snoot, Simeon one day finds himself accepting a dare from one of them, Pik, to sneak inside the forbidden chamber that contains the glass enclosure where his mother’s Swarm, named Ansanzi, is housed. He takes the dare and slips into the chamber.

The Swarms actually spend most of their time in the form of a huge cluster of individual, normal sized dragonflies. The addition of a special liquid component manufactured by the Shemari causes the insects to merge into the single, giant creature. Simeon finds a vial of this liquid and releases it through the hatch on the top of the enclosure. The giant Swarm appears and then Simeon witnesses it laying an egg. This shouldn’t be possible as the Swarms are artificial beings with no capability to reproduce.

Then another impossible thing happens: Simeon hears the voice of the Swarm in his head, telling him that all the Swarms are, in fact, alive and pleading with him to take the egg away and hide it. He complies and takes the egg out of the city to secret it away in a mountain cave.

Unfortunately, Simeon now finds himself on the verge of being branded a heretic and must go before a priestly panel of inquiry to explain himself. Veda, his mother, is present for obvious reasons but also because her status as a Bakkujasi now hangs in the balance. Simeon is given every opportunity to recant and he is well aware that he should, that it’s his only way out, but he can’t be untrue to himself and deny what he saw. He is judged guilty of heresy, but due to the mitigating circumstance of being the son of a Bakkujasi, he is sentenced not to execution but to total memory erasure and exile. His mother must endure the same fate.

Many years later the boy who was once Simeon is now a young man named Vivreki, living on a small farm far, far away from the stronghold of the Shemari with people who he believes to be his actual family: brother Stief, and his mother, Calla, a widow whose husband passed away three years prior. Vivreki enjoys his simple life working on the farm and has never wanted anymore than what he has; that is, until he begins to manifest strange abilities.

He discovers that he can generate an intense, blue glow which can heal injuries, and, terrifyingly, even resurrect the dead. The Shemari have not forgotten about this boy who was once Simeon. They have kept a close watch over him all these years and these powers are enough to make them question the leniency and mercy of their ruling on him. So decided, a Swarm Rider is dispatched to the farm to kill its inhabitants and burn the place to the ground.

Vivreki and Stief witness the murder of their mother at the hands of the Swarm Rider. They manage to escape and, now homeless and with few options, decide to find a way to retaliate against the enemies who are now actively hunting them. Little does Vivreki know but he will eventually come face to face with his former friend, Pik, Asoori Pikresh, now on path to joining the Shemari.

In this book, Deborah J. Miller does an excellent job of world building. She draws aspects freely from many widely different Earthly belief systems and mythologies even as she creates a few of her own. The result is a treasure trove of potentially incompatible ideas imaginatively woven into a new form.

I must confess that I don’t normally read much in the Fantasy genre. It’s a vein of writing which, I, at least, feel too often possesses a credibility gap that is simply much too wide to ignore. This is writing in which everything must be taken entirely on faith.

That being said, Swarmthief’s Dance, for the most part, acquits itself of its own unlikelihood by resting on a solid foundation of skillful writing and excellent character development. Despite the genre elements Deborah J. Miller’s style is never pretentious or insulting to the intelligence. The characters are all carefully nuanced.

Their interactions are complicated and full of all the contradictory thought processes and behavior one would expect from realistic individuals. They are not genre stereotypes. The various locales and societies of Myr are constructed with loving care and detail so as to seem vibrant and functioning. Readers will truly feel transported to another world.

The first book in a planned trilogy, Swarmthief’s Dance does have something to say about the nature of belief and the way in which those in power strive to control what, exactly, is believed. When a new religious movement based around the worship of a Goddess known as Mauru suggests that the eggs of the Swarm are actually a sign from her, the Shemari begin to threaten communities with swift, military action to quell such sacrilegious views. In their eyes there is very little that does not qualify as heresy and they will not tolerate even a momentary lapse in the population’s dependence upon them.

The novel moves along at a easy pace for most of its length but unfortunately author Miller also throws a tremendous amount of information and detail at the reader just in this first book. She also lays nearly all of her cards on the table at the outset and this creates a definite sense of dramatic irony in that the reader then knows the how and why of almost every major plot point up front. I feel that this could have as much of a chance of hindering enjoyment of the story as it could in enhancing it.

Armed with foreknowledge of most of the events in the novel a reader may still simply have fun in seeing the ways in which the characters work out for themselves what the reader already knows. But they may also find that they cannot connect with, and thus, cannot go along on the journey with the characters, feeling what they feel as they encounter a new situation.

Fortunately there are still some secrets left for later and one hopes that the author has more tricks up her sleeve. But this glut of detail becomes especially apparent toward the end of the novel. Events begin to tear along at a breakneck pace, veering dizzyingly from one scene to the next and back again. The story begins to seem very rushed and forced.

It’s almost as if the author realized while writing that she had introduced too many plot elements and characters which were trailing loose ends and had to quickly try to tie them all up. Around this point my dislike of the Fantasy genre began to resurface. I had really enjoyed the novel up to this point and sincerely didn’t want to see it go the way of so many of its contemporaries.

She also makes use of the dreaded and much frowned upon practice of Deus ex Machina, the introduction of a character or event for the sole purpose of resolving some otherwise logically irresolvable situation. About halfway through the book four secondary characters are introduced who seem to be set up to have fairly major roles later in the series.

However, in the last few pages, they are abruptly, unceremoniously killed off. Throughout most of the last quarter of the book I found that the events leading up to, and including the climax, mainly left me scratching my head in confusion.

All of this, though, is academic and purely a matter of personal observation and a question as to what degree a person is willing to suspend their disbelief. As I stated above, Swarmthief’s Dance succeeds because Deborah J. Miller is a talented writer. In the end, are the trappings really so important as to overshadow good storytelling?