Some Details On Roland

"The Queen of Air and Darkness."

The opening passage describes a boy and a girl, then informs us that:

"Their age was about sixteen, but they did not know this, considering themselves Outlings and thus indifferent to time, remembering little or nothing of how they had once dwelt in the lands of men." (p. 3)

They did not know this... As in several passages written by Stieg Larsson, this sentence in a Poul Anderson narrative does not present the point of view of either of these two newly introduced characters. Instead, the omniscient narrator directly - and unusually - informs us, the readers, of a fact about the characters that they themselves did not know. 

(Most readers neither notice nor reflect on this, of course!)

They are on Roland, a planet that is so terrestroid that human beings can not only breathe the air but also eat the food and drink the water. (p. 11) How plausible is that?

One "outwayer" farmer hopes to harvest:

yerba hay;

bathyrhiza wood;

pericoup;

glycophyllon;

chalcanthemum to be sold by city florists;

rover pelts for the furriers. (p. 26)

Every fictional Andersonian planet has a rich and detailed ecology. 

And, like nearly every other Andersonian environment, this one also includes loud wind and roaring rain:

"...outside, wind hooted, lightning flared, rain crashed on roof and walls and roared down to swirl among the courtyard cobblestones." (ibid.)

As ever, that wind punctuates conversations and emphasizes dramatic pauses in the characters' dialogue. When the farmer has spoken intensely and his family has grown still:

"Wind hooted beyond the walls and rattled the storm shutters." (p. 27)

With this backup, the farmer repeats his entreaty to Barbro Cullen not to venture into forbidden territory:

"'Don't you.'" (ibid.)