Wintermind

In the aftermath of a bloody war, two cultures rediscovered one another after long centuries of isolation: the Coven, a pastoral tribe with strange telepathic powers, and the City, a race of immortals who preserved man’s scientific heritage. Slowly, the painful union of these two worlds began. But their joining unleashed an awesome, hidden force that overshadowed both races’ future.A haunting saga of America in the far future, WINTERMIND has all the color and sweep of a great epic, combined with the human insight and intimate characterization of two of the field’s most accomplished talents.

Set in a post-holocaust USA, the first volume depicts a conflict between rural followers of a diseased mutant form of Christianity and a city in which a science-based world view is encapsulated; in the second, a personal drama and an interesting half-breed protagonist intensify the grain of narrative, but peculiarly diminish the sense, given off by the earlier book, of a large sf occasion.