Reading The Bones

This skillful and entertaining exploration of language and cross-cultural communication presents a portrait of sentient beings in the midst of discovering written language. The Xenolinguists are a guild of alien-language translators who travel the galaxy. Translator Ries Danyo is a down-on-his-luck lingster, so far gone he's hooked on zyth. Once a promising talent, he's fallen to interpreting for the deputy commissioner's wife on her shopping sprees in the Freh bazaar. But when a Freh uprising leads to murder, Danyo must lead the commissioner's daughters to safety on a journey that irrevocably changes the Frehti language and the future of Krishna itself.
About the Author:
Sheila Finch is the author of seven science fiction novels, including David Brin's Out of Time 2, Shaping the Dawn, and Shaper's Legacy. She has won the Compton Crook Award and is a regular contributor to Amazing and Fantasy & Science Fiction. She lives in Long Beach, California.