Songs of the Earth is a slightly derivative high fantasy of the kind where magic users are persecuted by a pseudo-Christian capital-C Church. (I am in general not very impressed by Fantasy Pseudo-Christian Capital-C Churches. I am particularly unimpressed when it is also mentioned that the persecution is a fairly recent thing that happened after years of having magic users fighting for the Church.) Despite the persecution, the magic users do their best to protect the world from the entities that lie beyond “the Veil” in the reality next door to their own.