The Pethosian Gift, Cristina Archer

The Peithosian Gift is a speculative fiction novel about two warring clans with the power to control the minds of others.

As a whole, this novel is complex, intricate, and simply it is busy.

Being split into 5-parts, (in a time-based split), the novel first helps to outline the actions which set the current affairs in motion, or the chain-of-events as you will. Due to the nature of the novel, there is a vast array of characters, but, it’s easily adaptable – think Game of Thrones, it’s easy to attribute people to a thing, and learn from there. But, there is some area for confusion.

Basically, The Peithosian Gift, is about two-warring clans (families, sharing the same common ancestor), the Morgan’s and the Kanes, who have violently disputed the right to use their gift. Presently, the Morgans are outnumbered, and subsequently persecuted by the Kanes (for using their gift), most are hiding, while others are on the war-path of revenge. Assassinations, run rampant as the Kane’s strive to prevent a mind-controlled world. One clan seeks a ‘saviour’, and the other fears the birth of a child too gifted.

Enter Radha.

A child born to a third clan, lost to time. Powers far superior, to a point where she lacks control. Life progresses, leaders clash, and Radha is forced to run – with both sides on her tale.

It’s an interestingly constructed tale, on what reminds me of modern-day ‘mind-control’ speculation. It may not be a gift, or a power, but it carries an inherent marker, where we (as a people) are controlled by various aspects of the world, and usually at the whim of a minor few. But on a more topical note, mind control, and compulsion raises a moral dilemma of sorts, a play on ethics. Raising questions of phenomena, and senselessness as attributed to an external control – thought provoking to say the least.

Overall, the question worth asking, (with the prompt of the next novel), is it The Peithosian Gift, or the Peithosian Curse? (Count me eager to find out.)

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. For more, visit https://ljkastermanslibrary.wordpress.com/