Revelation, the second of Carol Berg's "The Rai-Kirah" sequence, takes the difficult route of putting almost everything we were told in the first novel Transformation up for grabs. Berg's hero, the former slave Seyonne, is busy fighting demons in the mental landscapes where they possess the living, just as his people always have--until the day when he meets a demon who is not a ravening beast, but an urbane charming being who knows altogether too much about Seyonne. To the pursuit of an explanation, and a new justice based on that knowledge, Seyonne is prepared to sacrifice everything he has--including his friendship with the Imperial prince Aleksander and his marriage to his own queen Ysanne. As with Transformation, Berg creates in Revelation powerfully sensuous landscapes both realistic and uncanny; her characterisation of Seyonne, a man whose self-doubt is not the least of his virtues, is admirable, as is that of Fiona, the bodyguard/assassin set to watch him for signs of corruption and who comes to be his truest ally. Berg makes the pursuit of personal honour attractively the unchanging core of an adventure where everything else we know is unreliable. --Roz Kaveney