I’ve known about this book for a few years, but I kept putting off reading it because the premise seemed so forbidding. It’s set on another planet—Vokhtah—and the characters are all aliens. Well, alien to us, I mean–they are the creatures that evolved on Vokhtah. Not a human to be found, is my point. It’s intimidatingly exotic and strange, and that’s why I didn’t read it for so long, even though I enjoyed Flory’s other, unrelated sci-fi novel Miira. 

And for sure, Vokhtah is strange. The most intelligent creatures that inhabit the eponymous planet are a species—or really two closely-related species—with characteristics suggestive of birds, bats and perhaps insects. To make things even tougher, they don’t have names; only titles and ranks. There are traders, plodders, apprentices, healers, and a range of characters referred to only as numbers. Not only that, they are hermaphroditic—so, before mating, they have no defined genders.

Technology on Vokhtah is primitive—it appears to be largely what we would consider Stone or maybe early Bronze Age, although some references are made to machinery of some sort, but it’s not clear exactly how it works. There are different seasons that dictate the tribes’ customs, and time is kept according to the planet’s two suns.

And then there is the language. Obviously, the book is written in English, but the characters speak their dialogue with a different grammar. For example, instead of saying, “Are you hungry,” they would say, “Being hungry?” I don’t think the word “is” occurs once in this book. It gives you the feeling that you’re genuinely reading something spoken in a different language and translated into the closest approximation possible in our own tongue.

I’m telling you all this to prepare you up front: Vokhtah is not a typical or familiar book. The first half or so, you have to get acclimated to the alien planet and its population, their customs, and their ways of life. 

Flory does a great job crafting a profoundly different world. Even though I will admit that in the first half I found the story hard to follow, it really didn’t matter because I was just enjoying experiencing the atmosphere. Although it was sometimes hard for me to tell who characters were and how they related to the larger thread of the plot, it didn’t bother me, because I was just enjoying reading these fascinating little vignettes of life on this world.

My favorite of these is the dramatic performance of an old piece of Vokh lore—the story of the Great Nine and the Rogue. We learn that there are actually two versions of this story, and finding out the differences between the two versions and why they exist is just a fantastic concept. I loved this part.

Over the second half of the book, things coalesce, characterizations take shape, and I found myself sympathizing with members of this bird/bat/bug species more than I ever would have believed possible. The journey of the Messenger and the Apprentice along the Spine of the World (great name) was riveting. There’s even a little bit of a mystery element to it as well, which I won’t spoil here.

Yes, this book is different and weird and unlike anything else I’ve ever read. But that’s the point!  If intelligent life exists on other planets, it’s going to be bizarre and foreign and at least semi-incomprehensible to human intellects. Reading this book really did feel like being transported to an alien world, and that was fantastic. I wish I’d read it sooner, because it really is a master-class in world-building. Vokhtah is a haunting, vividly-constructed depiction of a fascinating world—one I’d happily revisit.