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Like many of Maxwell’s books, this is space opera from the id.
Sharia and Kane are psychics whose soul-bond is externalized and visible within the color-changing jewels they both wear. Sharia has silver skin and violet eyes and translucent silver hair. She can kill (and heal) people with her hair. Yes, literally. Kane has translucent black hair and can pick up psychometric impressions from objects. (Via his hands. I know, too bad.)
They Can Never Touch because they both have five fingers and five touching five is the ultimate taboo on their planet. When it turns out that there is an actual reason behind this, even more angst ensues. The plot, such as it is, is that Sharia and Kane’s home planet collectively went insane and the whole population became a ravening mob of crazed psychics when a pair of purple jewels that were the only thing preventing this were deactivated and then stolen. Kane and Sharia, in between touching, not touching, longing to touch, having various space yentas tell them they’ll go insane if they don’t touch, etc, search for the jewels.
And if that wasn’t enough, there are semi-sentient ships, ancient artifacts, space pirates, a translating machine that drives you insane, reincarnation, and an unkillable interdimensional transparent soul-eating cat companion.
There’s too much action occurring on the psychic plane for my taste, but it’s all great fun when people aren’t communing with or zapping each other in lengthy passages of abstract description. Kane and Sharia are sweet and rather more sensible than one would expect under the circumstances, considering all the psychic lunacy and epic angst floating about. I enjoyed this.
Timeshadow Rider
Sharia and Kane are psychics whose soul-bond is externalized and visible within the color-changing jewels they both wear. Sharia has silver skin and violet eyes and translucent silver hair. She can kill (and heal) people with her hair. Yes, literally. Kane has translucent black hair and can pick up psychometric impressions from objects. (Via his hands. I know, too bad.)
They Can Never Touch because they both have five fingers and five touching five is the ultimate taboo on their planet. When it turns out that there is an actual reason behind this, even more angst ensues. The plot, such as it is, is that Sharia and Kane’s home planet collectively went insane and the whole population became a ravening mob of crazed psychics when a pair of purple jewels that were the only thing preventing this were deactivated and then stolen. Kane and Sharia, in between touching, not touching, longing to touch, having various space yentas tell them they’ll go insane if they don’t touch, etc, search for the jewels.
And if that wasn’t enough, there are semi-sentient ships, ancient artifacts, space pirates, a translating machine that drives you insane, reincarnation, and an unkillable interdimensional transparent soul-eating cat companion.
There’s too much action occurring on the psychic plane for my taste, but it’s all great fun when people aren’t communing with or zapping each other in lengthy passages of abstract description. Kane and Sharia are sweet and rather more sensible than one would expect under the circumstances, considering all the psychic lunacy and epic angst floating about. I enjoyed this.
Timeshadow Rider
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WANT.
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Also, there is some kind of indication that Timeshadow Rider takes place in the far (far*) past of the Dancer books, but I forget what it is.
*Far far far. I love how everything is millions of years old.
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Hmmm....
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I...
Wow.
I might have to track this down.
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It's Cherryh-dense, it really is. Maxwell doesn't get much credit for it because she adds so much id and angst (whereas Cherryh just wants to tell you about people being exhausted and miserable and terrified, which is still id, but not the romantic kind).
_Timeshadow Rider_ starts with an explanation that the Za'ar civilization is a million years old, and it's collapsing -- and then somewhere along you realize that the Zaarain Cycle that is recalled (as ancient legend) in the Fire Dancer series *hasn't started yet*; those million years were the barbarian prehistory. (Because, let's face it, a civilization which is two pieces of purple crystal away from mass savagery still has a few issues to work out.)
And the extradimensional cat sings in two voices, because -- as Brust would say -- a god is someone who can be in two places at once.
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Wait, how many fingers does everyone else on the planet have? And why? And couldn't one of them cut off a finger? I know, I am not interrogating the text from the right perspective...
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Like I said, there's depth to it. This is also the first book I saw that presented the idea of True Soulmates and then (explicitly) said, look, this isn't *love*. Soulmates can wind up lovers, mortal enemies, or just destroy themselves trying to connect. The bond doesn't care.