Whalesong

In the years after the stars fell young Noah Manaluk. an Inupiat Eskimo living at Point Hope, Alaska, eats a piece of possessed seal liver that changes his life. By the time he is 17 he is a shaman who has the ability to call animals to the hunter's spears and fish into nets cast by the People.

Thinker, a Humpback whale, is the only one of his pod who perceives anything beyond his immediate surroundings. He is aware of the longteeth waiting at the top of the world and cautiously moves to the middle of the pod.

He hears the summons and realizes another exists who can completely communicate with him - something that has never before happened in his life - and it wants to kill him.

Whalesong is the story of two disparate beings, enemies by the nature of their world yet closer in understanding than with any member of their own species. Two creatures that have as much to learn about themselves as they do the other, and come to rely on one another as they begin a journey which will not only change the world but save it.

Leonard (Stoney) Compton has had novelettes and short stories published in Universe 1, Tomorrow, Speculative Fiction, Writers of the Future, Vol. IX and Jim Baen's Universe. His novel, Russian Amerika (Baen Books) was published in 2007 and its sequel, Alaska Republik, in February 2011.
He has six novels in print. He and his wife, Colette, their ever-changing number of cats, Pullo, their energetic Australian Blue Heeler, and Parker, their Akita/Red Heeler mix have recently moved to Oregon. He is an avid hiker and velocipede enthusiast.