At the outset, she is returned to her home planet, deposited in a wild desert where the culture is alien to her. Whether the protagonist Estri is a piece or a player is the central conundrum of the book, which seems to have been highly influenced by Dune, as well as the pulp era sword-and-planet classics. In keeping with the more supernaturalist angle of the Silistra books, the yris-tera is understood as an oracle, even more than as a game. Rather than the Jetan of Barsoom or the Kaissa of Gor, Silistra has the yris-tera ("Weathers of Life") in which sixty carved figural pieces are deployed somewhat at random onto a set of three seven-by-seven square grids, placed one above the other. This second volume of Morris's Silistra series is built around the board game motif that is a feature of arterial sword-and-planet fiction.
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