The human project is once more immense: taming nature, securing peace, creating order. The protagonists are fabulous, easily the equals of ancient gods and heroes. In the first fable, , we try to subdue and measure nature - though led astray through sex and murder. In , we are spies and cleansers, the figures in an epic with a suspect leader. Our histories repeat themselves, and the shapeshifted waft the epic into myth. We are explorers, finding new frontiers, but never settlement. are the gang that founds a state and provide a founding myth. We are their accomplices, artists and managers in their theatrical world. Actors and actresses mingle with inventors, warriors and demigods. Where the first two fables give us a cosmology, The Bright Stars are epic and creative, giving sense and order to this new world, its search for rules, purpose, security and punishment. is the founding blood myth, a solution true to our nature, resolving uncertainties remaining from the previous fables. We recognise the red tank as it circles us and fires. Our aspirations, fears and ambitions, remain, their mysteries familiar and comforting. The species sees where it has come from and where it has now settled - the cosmos is filled again. ' once again displays the seriousness and sheer brilliance of Fraser's conceptual aims and the dazzling invention of his linguistic fantasy.' Rouben Kodesh