On Arbre, scholars are segregated from the general population. Catastrophic disaster in the distant past set this pattern as sensible: lock away the dangerous minds, keep them away from technology they could use to cause further ruin to the human species. And so the 'real' world goes on outside the walls of the 'concents' or 'maths' - the conclaves of monk-like students of all things mathematical and theoretical and hypothetical. It is in one such math that we find our story's narrator, Erasmus (or Raz), a relatively junior student. He joined the concent aged 8, and ten years later he's about to get his first glimpse of the outside world since. For, you see, ...  Read the complete review