A Woman Cloaked in Shadow — S.P. Somtow

After 33 years, S.P. Somtow is finally creating a fifth book in the Inquestor universe, the galaxy-spanning science fantasy series that Theodore Sturgeon called the greatest magnitude of spectacle and color since Olaf Stapledon. The book is being released in a series of installments in pulp-sized magazine format. INQUESTOR TALES No. 2 contains the second episode of the novel, interesting notes on the Inquestral Highspeech, a bonus reprint of the original version of The Dust, a story incorporated into the tetralogy but never reprinted in its magazine form, a lettercolumn, and other notes and mini-articles from S.P. Somtow as well as from many of the field's most interesting commentarians. This episode delves deeper into the world of the Temple of Aerat on a world called Urna, where young acolytes learn the sacred rituals of lovemaking, into the childhood of the bard Sajit and his doppling Tijas, and connects with the story of Lady Varuneh, the first Inquestor. This issue of Inquestor Tales prints for the first time an introduction to the series written by the great Theodore Sturgeon in 1985, shortly before he passed away.