Lucky's Harvest

From the front flap of the Gollancz first edition: "When she was a young girl Lucky Sariola belonged to a space-going mining commune which came upon an asteroid whose caves concealed the bones of serpentine aliens and humanoids. It was Luck who discovered that the rock was an Ukko, a mysterious entity which would respond to stories told to it. And when Lucky told it stories she remembered from her Finnish grandmother, the Ukko took her commune through Mana-space to a planet of forest, lake and sea - Kaleva, Earth's first and only interstellar colony. Centuried later Lucky, altered by the Ukko, is still alive, though capricious and sometimes crazy. By mating with her, her consort Bertel had his life prolonged for centuries, as will the men who first bed her daughters - Lucky's Harvest. Kaleva is a quasi-feudal society salted with advanced technology. But humans are not the only species on the planet - Isi, snake-like aliens, and the Juttahat, their humanoid servants, have also found Kaleva - and the Isi are tampering in human affairs with the aim of dominating people as they rule the Juttahat. Now, on the 402nd anniversary of Lucky's discovery her daughter Jatta, banished by her mother, comes to Osmo van Maanen's keep as a vagabond with her demon child Jack. What happens there will set in motion a series of events that will bring havoc to Kaleva and all its people - human, Isi and Juttahat. Ian Watson has drawn inspiration from the great Finnish epic the Kalevala to create a totally realistic and wonderfully exotic alien world. The result is the most exciting and compulsive story yet from one of Britain's best sf writers."