This young adult fantasy is set in a pre-industrial land where different clans of people carry different genetic “gifts.” Some gifts have beneficial properties, such as the ability to communicate with animals. Others are more destructive, such as the gift of the narrator’s people, to “unmake” any thing, living or inanimate.

Orrec as a young boy is waiting for his gift to manifest. With it he is expected to protect his family’s land, livestock and people from their aggressive neighbors. But when it does come, he cannot control when he uses it or who he uses it on, so he must blindfold himself to keep from turning it on the people he loves.

Orrec tells his story to a visitor from the cities in the Lowlands, where they do not have the gifts and consider them to be folklore. This is a very readable fable, as we learn through Orrec’s narrative more about the gifts and the land in which he lives. But perhaps because this was written for young adults, or because I just finished A Wizard of Earthsea (a very similar story), it all feels too familiar. This would be an excellent book to give a young reader, though, who is just starting to explore the fantasy genre.