On the planet Ver Day, tensions are rising between immigrant "newbies" and the First Settlers, the planet's majority population of green-skinned Luddite deep ecologists. Greenie packer Sal Banks doesn't know Meesha Raschad is a newbie when she hires him to help haul her cargo through the jungle, and Raschad doesn't quite appreciate the trouble he is bringing on Sal by accompanying her through the green backlands, where newbie-hatred runs high and Ver Day's terrifying native fauna runs wild.

Half the book passes before Mistwalker finds its rhythm, and even when its characters shake free from obtrusive romance-novel clichés, they never become memorable. There are some terrific action set-pieces in the novel, including an incredible scene where voracious creatures overrun a barricaded town, but Mistwalker is unable to sustain the tension of these high points. Instead, it subsides, again and again, into the First-Novel doldrums, and its characters are forced into illogical actions in order to drag the plot along. (And, oh god, those obtrusive romance-novel clichés reappear in the eleventh hour.)

But who cares, because Ver Day's green, green world is an excellent SF sandbox, and its depiction of a Wild West frontier-planet populated by radical environmentalists is fascinating. Mistwalker skimps on the human beings, but it nails the setting. I can't remember the last time I read a book that got the psychology of tropical forests -- the humidity, the rot, the insects -- so precisely. ( )