Dray finds himself once again stranded on the beach of a land with which he knows nothing about, where only moments ago he was sailing swiftly through the night sky's with his friends and his sweat Delia, Delia of the Blue Mountains! Immediately, per usual, Dray is shackled and sold into slavery to do another Apim's bidding until he either kills everyone, or grows bored and does something about it. For the next 11 years Dray grows and Army, is a Slave, becomes a King and takes part in the murder of a Kovneva. An interesting and key factor to this volume is how Dray is forced to be a miner in the Heavenly Mines. To dig and produce a relatively bland and boring looking material, yet very important to the Hamalese and their flying machine.

In this book we are introduced to the propulsion science behind the flyers, well sort of, and it appears that all the mystery and science lies simply in a box of dirt, or so Ackers would have us believe! In Book 9, Bladesman of Antares I have a dirty suspicion that we will finally find out what all that materiel Dray was digging out of the Heavenly Mines is all about, and how that ties in together with the levitating properties of the Fliers. ( )