Readers expecting a traditional, high fantasy epic from A Telling of Stars, the debut novel from writer Caitlin Sweet, will quickly grow confused and frustrated. While still working within the genre parameters of standard fantasy, Sweet has created something unique; a thoughtful, meditative, distinctly feminine fantasy novel, a rich fever-dream of a book closer in form and spirit to By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept than The Lord of the Rings.

Jaele is barely a teenager when she witnesses the slaughter of her family by a roving band of Sea Raiders. Swearing vengeance, Jaele pursues one of the Raiders across a landscape rich in wonders and magic toward a final confrontation with the killer on his home island. In so doing, she enters a mythic world, her pursuit paralleling the path of vengeance taken by the legendary Queen Ghala, who pursued the Raiders in legends recounted to Jaele by her father.

While driven by an urgency for revenge, Jaele’s story is laconic, languidly paced, image-rich, and introspective. Owing to an amorphous, timeless quality, her quest seems to take very nearly a lifetime. Jaele finds herself drawn into, accepted by, and an explorer within alien cultures and societies. From a desert band of nomadic riders to a city locked in ice to a haunted castle that is at once a refuge and a prison to a narcotic riverside idyll of rich fruit and sex, A Telling of Stars is an episodic mosaic that only gradually reveals its true shape.

The novel occasionally veers into excess. Heady becomes overpowering. Languid becomes monotonous. Soporific becomes sleep-inducing. That said, A Telling of Stars is an impressive debut, a re-envisioning of the fantasy genre rich in imagination, character, and magic.