Here's the wholesale situation super aliens (we never see) abducted humans on Earth through all of human history to bring on the planet Ose. This is a planet without metal (not including iron) where they will have much more trouble making war. Humans are farmers and settlers in technology that recalls the conquest of the West (but without the Colts and without iron). They coexist on the planet with another race that once was almost destroyed itself by war and strives to be peaceful since. (Super-race-alien-we-don't-ever-seen detonated iron and all heavy metals in the world to end this war, and, much later, she brought human on the planet to test what happens without iron, and cohabitation with another race).
The reports are very tense between humans and horstels (Off- the prefix comprising as horse in English, since they are human with equine traits to fast). Humans and horstels are always at the limit of the war, there are human groups Ku Klux Klan style who murder horstels like KKK Mississippi murdering blacks ...
And in all this, there are some human understanding for the other race. Including a human particularly attracted to seductive curves of a young Horstel. But humans also carry an obscurantist and totalitarian religion, and relationships with Horstel are seen as an abomination (besides the fact that it is "sleeping with the enemy"), and often end up at the stake, which cools a bit (if you'll pardon the collision of conflicting images).
As between these redneck bigots and "nice and" almost back to the state of nature, there is something of the "Ku Klux Klan and the film Mississippi Burning" or colonization of North America that ended the lives of Indians. In terms of themes, therefore, it may be a bit dated: racial segregation, bigotry, racial violence, so ... But still interesting today because (unfortunately) is a topical issue.
The last third begins to be a little chaotic at plot level; certain loyalties characters (and change of loyalties) are implausible; some actions of some groups as a bit strange ... The love story is dotted, begun early, interrupted in the middle, and briefly knotweed in the end. In any case, it is dense at the plot and twists. In total, c'st a book that has qualities, which has lots of interesting aspects, inventive, but -to my view- is not as good as it could have been ...
