This is the story of a young woman named Tembi, relatively new to her status and job as a Witch, a tremendously powerful person who controls the movement of people and goods between a thousand colonized worlds (there is a prequel novel called Stoneskin that tells of her origins in a slum, her recruitment as a Witch at the age of 8, and her training and growth as a girl and a woman). Tembi has internalized a personal set of morals that will be greatly tested as she first learns to move around the galaxy with the help of the Deep, an alien, non-corporeal, extra-dimensional being with nearly god-like powers and an almost complete lack of understanding of the human condition, plus a very confused ability to communicate with the Witches. The tests grow greater and more urgent as the Witches try to maintain their neutrality in the face of a genocidal war between genetically modified planetary colonists and “Earth-normal” settlers. As the war spreads and Tembi gets more deeply involved in trying to reduce the killing, she is drawn into intrigues both within the Witches, and on both sides of the war. Can she resolve her own conflicts about the rights and the effectiveness of her actions? Can she resolve the differences between her responses to the war and those of her friends, her adoptive mother, her ex-lover, and her greatest enemy? And what about the Deep that she doesn’t understand will bite her and all the Witches? All this, and this is only the first book in the series! I loved it, and I eagerly anticipate the next one.