Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite

In Anthony Lange’s Birds in a Land of No Trees, astrophysics researcher Quentin Narmast expects nothing more than an awkward evening when an eccentric stranger named Conrad Lyzachootri arrives at his Boston apartment, claiming to represent an interstellar council. Hours later, Quentin awakens inside the body of an alien inhabitant on Allunda, a distant planet hidden beneath permanent cloud cover, where citizens obey an enormous legal system called the Mandates. Quentin soon learns he has been brought there to introduce astronomy to a civilization that has never seen the stars. While MIT employee Tracey Iticant investigates the strange symbiotic creatures attached to every citizen, an Allundrian woman named SiMiYah faces exile after violating social rules that no longer make sense to her. Elsewhere, another young woman named Mist on Water begins questioning the spiritual teachings governing her isolated farming village as sickness spreads through the surrounding settlements.

Anthony Lange’s Birds in a Land of No Trees approaches science fiction as a way of examining how fear gradually disguises itself as social order. Lange builds Allunda with unusual patience, giving the rain-soaked world a constant atmosphere of caution where ordinary conversation is dangerous because legal Mandates govern behavior so thoroughly that citizens begin monitoring themselves. The most unsettling idea is in the symbiotic minders attached beside each citizen’s ear, creatures whispering guidance until outside control becomes indistinguishable from personal instinct. SiMiYah works especially well because doubt emerges slowly within her. This gives the novel emotional weight once she begins recognizing the contradictions inside the society she once accepted. Lange also understands how power sustains itself through certainty presented as protection, especially through the LifeSource oracle, manipulating fear during widespread sickness. Readers drawn toward philosophical science fiction centered upon social behavior and systems of belief will definitely appreciate this novel. Very highly recommended.