There’s a new global economic system – money has been replaced by time-debt, with seconds of people’s lives being the currency being exchanged.
There’s still rich and poor, master and slave, employer and employee, and Millisent is born into a life of servitude to the Lord and Lady, in a fiefdom where music is all important. There’s more than a hint of the Hans Christian Anderson, a modern fairly tale where the young child, at birth, is tipped for great things by the Lady, and, growing up, Millisent decides that her life is worth being forfeit to challenge the system.
It’s a story well told by Sanford, at one remove through the detached observer.
