I loved the book.. My sister gave it to me with high recommendations.. my girlfriend started reading it while I was and we ended up competing to read it, and she never touches a book without having to! Interesting social dynamic - although it covers slavery it is not a typical slave story. I would like many more books on this storyline but alas, the author has written only one other on the subject. READ IT!!

S.M. Stirling's comments here speak for me pretty well. Rarely has a book touched me in such a way that I have read it again within a month. The character of Costa, in particular, is one of the most interesting and involving characters I've come across. I've read and enjoyed all three of Severna Park's novels, but this one remains my favorite, for reasons I'm not sure I can explain.

It's rare for the conventions of space opera to be used for characterizations of this depth and clarity. SPEAKING DREAMS functions quite well as an adventure story, but it _shines_ as a study in character -- the effects of trauma, the difficult, risky necessity of trust, and the effort needed to overcome one's past. It is also, and oddly for a book containing so much vividly realized pain, charming. I'd even use the word sweet for parts, if it didn't have negative overtones and didn't contrast so starkly with the strength and honesty of the portrayals. This is the sort of book you read several times; and also the sort that makes you determined to look at anything new that appears under the author's name. -- S.M. Stirling

Ms. Park presents us with a dark future where the elite control the general population with technology, and later addictive drugs. The people revolt and murder most, but not all. Eve and her campanions are some of those surviving elite, living now as drug dealers. They must flee when pursued and discover a new world with its own intelligent beings. And from there it gets truely strange. I highly recommend this novel.

I loved this book. Complex characters, lots of action, and fascinating ideas. The story is told by Eve, and its powerful drive is her need to find her place in a difficult and violent world. And once she escapes her first family (a scene I adored), life doesn't become any easier. The writing is wonderful and the book impossible to put down.

Humans have traveled throughout the galaxy, but in spite of some incredible technical achievements, Homo Sapiens live in a caste system consisting of the Meshed, Jacked, and Jackless. Technology is the divisor. The Meshed uses nanomachines to link with the sensory and information Net. The Jacked works with a simple computer. The Jackless has no access.

The Meshed is the most powerful and envied of the triad. However, many of the Meshed selfishly and malevolently flaunt their powers by using them for personal gain regardless of the cost to others. The other groups use computer viruses to hunt down the Meshed. Three of the more evil Meshed (Eve, Corey, and AnnMarie) flee to the ThreeSys where they begin to peddle an elixir to end aggressive actions. They actually sell the addictive drug Staze that leaves the user inside an euphoric dream state. The trio finally heads to the planet Paradise where THE ANNUNCIATE and the original Mesh live. Awaiting their arrival is an essence that does not require mechanical means to break down the barrier between reality and virtual reality.

THE ANNUNCIATE is a dark look at the future of humanity and in the fertile mind of Severna Park it appears very bleak. The story line is fast-paced yet thought provoking. The main characters are unappealing including Eve even after she breaks away from Corey and Annmarie. However, that characterization is essential to the overall theme of galaxy growing gloomier wherever mankind is. Not for everyone, Ms. Park is one of the new talents that have energized the SF genre with this novel and the HAND OF PROPHECY.

The story begins at a bar in the town Kagda on the planet Naya. Yaeylie Frenna is the slave of Olney a veterinarian, assigned to the planet located on the frontier ruled by the Emirate. The Emirate had driven the Faraqui from this planet and its neighbors, including Traja some many years before. Now, the Faraqui appear ready to retake what was once theirs.

With the conflict between these two warring factions as the backdrop, Hand of Prophecy begins a tale of family conflict and a struggle for freedom of an enslaved Jatahn race of which Frenna is one. Once the favored slaves of the Faraqui, they are now indentured to the Emirate. Her chains are of biochemical construction. She has been infected by the Emirate with the virus, "a drug that create antibodies at an inhumanly rate," writes park.

Maybe.

Other reviewers have given the gist of the plot, but I don't agree with their ratings, that's why I review this book. LeGuin in Four Ways of Forgiveness has written better about slavery and how it destroys the owned and owners.

Octavia Butler in The Kindred writes better about the sexual relationship in slavery between owned and owner. In that book there are outsiders who make it easier for us to empathize.

Many of Samuel R. Delaney's books are about unequal sexual relationships. I prefer his too.

I liked Hallie in this book, but Frenna was too distant, too strange, ultimately an unsatisfying hero, for me. Troah was too too scary to also be sympathetic, as I think she was supposed to be, eventually.

In my opinion, it is worth reading, if you don't expect too much from it. And you've read the others first.

Severna Park is a beautiful writer. Sci Fi enthusiastics can read Hand of Prophecy as a rambunctious and fast-paced action tale, but I preferred to read it on the level I believe she meant it to be read - a social critique. She's a passionate and brilliant writer.