From 1992 through 1999, Del Rey books published a series of 27 novels under the “Del Rey Discovery” imprint. These books weren’t always first novels (at least three of them were actually the second books in their respective series), but they were all novels by relatively newly published authors, ranging from Nicola Griffith, Mary Rosenbaum, and L. Warren Douglas to Michelle Shirey Crean, Don DeBrandt, and Kevin Teixera. The 24th novel published under the imprint was Salinda Tyson’s fantasy Wheel of Dreams, which appears to have been her only novel, although she began published short stories in the 2010s. Wheel of Dreams, the 40th entry in the A to Z Review series, is also the first novel I’ll be discussing.

Wheel of Dreams opens with Kiera’s father hosting several travelers on an evening that culminates in Keira being sold to one of the travelers, a soldier named Roshannon, to be his wife. This is just the first indication of the level of misogyny which plagues the world in which Keira and Roshannon live. The morning after her forced wedding, Keira flees from Roshannon before he awakes, stealing his clothes so she can travel as a man. Keira’s goal is the city of Cartheon, where her dead mother had told her about when she was growing up.

Much of the novel focuses on setting up the world in which Keira and Roshannon live. The misogynist south, where she has grown up, is ruled by a priestly class. They are currently fighting a war against the witches of the north, who are known for their ability to see things in dreams to the extent that southerners, especially women, who have lucid dreams, are killed under suspicion of being witches. While Keira does have dreams, she doesn’t talk about them for fear that she will be killed. However, her marriage to Roshannon adds a threat to her life when it turns out the two can now share their thoughts.

Even as Keira wants to travel alone to protect her secret, she finds herself in the company of Hipolla, who knows the area better, and a young boy named Brat, who is more perceptive than Keira would like. Roshannon also proves to be more than he appeared and when he arrives home in his quest to find Keira, Tyson begins to flesh out his backstory, making him a more fully developed character than simply a soldier who bought himself a bride.

Beginning as a story of religious intolerance, which carries through the story, particularly in the form of the priest Lyrian Sena, who hates and fears the witches for the similarities he dreads exists between them and him, Wheel of Dreams expands its view to present a variety of religious beliefs, none of which Keira was aware of, being trained exclusively in the hateful religion that has taken hold of the south. Her slow understanding that she may not know as much about other religions is handled well.

During the first half of the novel, the pacing is a bit slow and Keira makes her way north and Tyson introduces the reader to her characters and, more importantly, the world, but once she maneuvers the characters into position, the story picks up steam. Tyson’s need to keep Keira and Roshannon and physically apart, even as their psychic link grew, creates a strange dynamic between the characters.

Tyson does an excellent job of creating a complex world and slowly revealing how three different cultures interact with each other, starting with the view one of those cultures has of the other two and slowly permitting the reader, and the main character, to discover the truth about each of the cultures while also keeping her eye on the personal stories of her characters. Wheel of Dreams is a strong debut entry in the subgenre now called romantasy.

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference six times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.