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siggismara's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
A solid 4 stars. Although a the setting of the story certainly bore the mark of the times it was written in there were also elements that far outlive that moment in time. It was a powerful experience to read something that advanced in terms gender and sexuality in a story written 50+ years ago. The science fiction and the story line also more than held its own. In fact it was hard to put this story down and I was left wishing for more at the end. Unfortunately for us Sci-Fi fans this is not the case.
nlgn's review against another edition
3.0
Worth reading, though I found it required a bit of effort to remain engaged through some stretches. the political sections were of far greater quality than the action sequences, where the author's sparse style led to a degree or incoherence.
brizreading's review against another edition
4.0
Gah. Ugh. Phew. That was gigantic. I need someone to talk about it with. Agh. I need someone to digest that all with! Are there essays about this book? There should be.
So much! So much is happening! I picked this one up for a bunch of reasons. It's a Strong Female Protagonist (weak Monty Python yey). It's social/political sci-fi, similar to (and loved by, apparently?) Ursula Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson, two authors I greatly admire. It's a "lost classic", which is always appealing (pretty obscure; hipsterfood).
And just, wow. I feel a little emotionally exhausted.
The story is set in the Medium-Far Future, where the solar system is way different from how it is today. Most of the planets are colonized, and radically different. Mars is a consumerist-Fascist dystopia that kinda felt like a creepy Miami/Malibu to me - or like Mars from Total Recall. Earth is a giant anarchist commune, and also an eco-disaster (so people live in domes). The moon is a theocratic dictator state. And Uranus, Saturn and Pluto have this kinda Mongolian, kinda old-fashioned hill tribe thing going on, where the people there - "Styths" - have mutated/evolved due to Unexplained Future History stuff. They now live in interesting-sounding domes, and are a Mighty and Warlike Race blah blah. Also, they have claws. They're basically Klingons. Am I the only one who saw them as Klingons?
The hiro-protagonist of the story is Paula Mendoza, this tough-as-nails lady from Earth. Paula starts the story unemployed and dating this mansplainy jerk named Tony (TONY! *fist shake*), but then - through bizarre and interesting anarchist-commune labor-rotation stuff - gets a job with the Committee - the commune's semi-somewhat government stand-in thing. Which is, incidentally, run by extremely Machiavellian types! Paula is tasked with drafting an interplanetary treaty between the Styths and Martians, who hate each other. Wow, responsibility. But I guess that's how anarchists swing? Anyway, because she read that one paper by Paul Krugman, she writes an awesome treaty leveraging cool trade stuff. She also gets impregnated by one of the Klingons, and decides to go live in Stythsville for, like, ten years.
A war happens at one point. Shit gets really intense. Work camps, despair. I despaired. Spoiler? Whatever.
The book definitely carries very strong Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson vibes. It's Le Guin-ish during the whole Styth Living section; where we have the outsider visiting a far-off planetary culture that resembles a mash-up of Earth cultures (the Styths are apparently based on Genghis Khan et al.?) and is all about anthropology and development economics and racism. It's Robinson-ish because every character is SO. DAMN. POLITICAL. To the point of feeling just cruel, dude. Also, like Robinson, Cecila Holland (the author) kills people off pretty mercilessly.
Overall, it was gigantic, and I generally loved it. It's definitely a missing classic, since the scope is vast and I could pick apart the feminist themes forever. (Like, dude, Paula is a super-independent anarchist lady who spends 75% of the book under the heel - sometimes literally! - of her über macho Genghis Khan husband.) The writing style is also brilliant, in that it's completely spare, journalistic, telegraphic. There is NO exposition, and very little feeling. This is especially awesome when something very strange and alien is being described; Holland lets you fill in the blanks. Space flight was described with a vividness I've never seen in sci-fi, film or book. And the flights over Uranus were psychadelic, mind-bending. It was kinda like a very trippy Hilary Mantel at times (and Hilary Mantel is already pretty trippy - imagine it in a gas giant!). I loved (and was disturbed by) the moments when Holland opened up her already weird universe to a potential even freakier: the allusions to civilizations beyond this solar system; or the ambitious Styth, Tanuojin, and his freaky healer hands. What!
Some stuff I loved less: despite it being like 90% awesome, I did find a couple things tedious. The characters, as written by Holland, were ambiguous, complex, weird creatures who behaved unexpectedly. Cool. BUT! It felt like some of her secondary characters were very briefly sketched out, and mostly caricatures. I especially wasn't into the fat-shamey portrayals of one prominent Committee politician, and one of Klingon Dude's other wives. Seriously, stop describing the rolls of fat and how appallingly fat these two women were. It's getting old. I also spotted a few other repetitive phrases, but I'll live. Despite these relatively minor flaws, it is a pretty brutal, mind-opening epic, and should rightly sit aside Frank Herbert's Dune and the like.
So much! So much is happening! I picked this one up for a bunch of reasons. It's a Strong Female Protagonist (weak Monty Python yey). It's social/political sci-fi, similar to (and loved by, apparently?) Ursula Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson, two authors I greatly admire. It's a "lost classic", which is always appealing (pretty obscure; hipsterfood).
And just, wow. I feel a little emotionally exhausted.
The story is set in the Medium-Far Future, where the solar system is way different from how it is today. Most of the planets are colonized, and radically different. Mars is a consumerist-Fascist dystopia that kinda felt like a creepy Miami/Malibu to me - or like Mars from Total Recall. Earth is a giant anarchist commune, and also an eco-disaster (so people live in domes). The moon is a theocratic dictator state. And Uranus, Saturn and Pluto have this kinda Mongolian, kinda old-fashioned hill tribe thing going on, where the people there - "Styths" - have mutated/evolved due to Unexplained Future History stuff. They now live in interesting-sounding domes, and are a Mighty and Warlike Race blah blah. Also, they have claws. They're basically Klingons. Am I the only one who saw them as Klingons?
The hiro-protagonist of the story is Paula Mendoza, this tough-as-nails lady from Earth. Paula starts the story unemployed and dating this mansplainy jerk named Tony (TONY! *fist shake*), but then - through bizarre and interesting anarchist-commune labor-rotation stuff - gets a job with the Committee - the commune's semi-somewhat government stand-in thing. Which is, incidentally, run by extremely Machiavellian types! Paula is tasked with drafting an interplanetary treaty between the Styths and Martians, who hate each other. Wow, responsibility. But I guess that's how anarchists swing? Anyway, because she read that one paper by Paul Krugman, she writes an awesome treaty leveraging cool trade stuff. She also gets impregnated by one of the Klingons, and decides to go live in Stythsville for, like, ten years.
A war happens at one point. Shit gets really intense. Work camps, despair. I despaired. Spoiler? Whatever.
The book definitely carries very strong Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson vibes. It's Le Guin-ish during the whole Styth Living section; where we have the outsider visiting a far-off planetary culture that resembles a mash-up of Earth cultures (the Styths are apparently based on Genghis Khan et al.?) and is all about anthropology and development economics and racism. It's Robinson-ish because every character is SO. DAMN. POLITICAL. To the point of feeling just cruel, dude. Also, like Robinson, Cecila Holland (the author) kills people off pretty mercilessly.
Overall, it was gigantic, and I generally loved it. It's definitely a missing classic, since the scope is vast and I could pick apart the feminist themes forever. (Like, dude, Paula is a super-independent anarchist lady who spends 75% of the book under the heel - sometimes literally! - of her über macho Genghis Khan husband.) The writing style is also brilliant, in that it's completely spare, journalistic, telegraphic. There is NO exposition, and very little feeling. This is especially awesome when something very strange and alien is being described; Holland lets you fill in the blanks. Space flight was described with a vividness I've never seen in sci-fi, film or book. And the flights over Uranus were psychadelic, mind-bending. It was kinda like a very trippy Hilary Mantel at times (and Hilary Mantel is already pretty trippy - imagine it in a gas giant!). I loved (and was disturbed by) the moments when Holland opened up her already weird universe to a potential even freakier: the allusions to civilizations beyond this solar system; or the ambitious Styth, Tanuojin, and his freaky healer hands. What!
Some stuff I loved less: despite it being like 90% awesome, I did find a couple things tedious. The characters, as written by Holland, were ambiguous, complex, weird creatures who behaved unexpectedly. Cool. BUT! It felt like some of her secondary characters were very briefly sketched out, and mostly caricatures. I especially wasn't into the fat-shamey portrayals of one prominent Committee politician, and one of Klingon Dude's other wives. Seriously, stop describing the rolls of fat and how appallingly fat these two women were. It's getting old. I also spotted a few other repetitive phrases, but I'll live. Despite these relatively minor flaws, it is a pretty brutal, mind-opening epic, and should rightly sit aside Frank Herbert's Dune and the like.
miramanga's review against another edition
1.0
I'm my own worst enemy. I saw this the whole way through to the end because it's a classic, and as a fan of the genre, you owe it to those forerunners to pay homage.
This is an epic space opera seen through the eyes of Paula, an Earthling who ends up at the centre of an inter-galactic war.
The storytelling is clunky and tedious. I had no clue what was going on a lot of the time. There is a lot of political rambling. There's a lot of unexplained stuff about a special kind of alien that doesn't add a lot to the overall journey. It felt like a mess.
Another reason that I read this book is because I am sure my father would have read it when he was around my age. He would always be investigating the SciFi shelves at the library whilst I was in the kids section. So even though this was a tedious read for me, it had a resonance that made me decide to finish up. I wonder if Pops got the whole way through.. :)
This is an epic space opera seen through the eyes of Paula, an Earthling who ends up at the centre of an inter-galactic war.
The storytelling is clunky and tedious. I had no clue what was going on a lot of the time. There is a lot of political rambling. There's a lot of unexplained stuff about a special kind of alien that doesn't add a lot to the overall journey. It felt like a mess.
Another reason that I read this book is because I am sure my father would have read it when he was around my age. He would always be investigating the SciFi shelves at the library whilst I was in the kids section. So even though this was a tedious read for me, it had a resonance that made me decide to finish up. I wonder if Pops got the whole way through.. :)
imitira's review
3.0
I found this book slightly mystifying at times. Character motivations are all very bold and drawn in primary colours, but not always working from the same palette. Nonetheless, it mostly kept me entertained as a strange blend of Shogun and Battlefield Earth, but with a feminist, meso-futurist angle, all the way through to a fairly miserable (if suitably literary) ending.
sexton_blake's review
2.0
I had high hopes for this one. The characterisations are deep,the principle protagonist's motives are muddied, and it promised to draw me in. However, when a novel is near-enough the length of DUNE, I require an engaging plot, and that's where this fell down and lost my interest. The meandering story goes nowhere, and does it at a crawl. Disappointed.
avid_d's review
4.0
I first read this nearly 40 years ago and really liked it.
Coming back to it now, after so many years, I have been delighted to discover that it still captures me. Yes, it seems seriously weak on its imagining of technology so far ahead, but I don't care: the Shakespearean level of familial and political skullduggery on a solar system scale does it for me.
Coming back to it now, after so many years, I have been delighted to discover that it still captures me. Yes, it seems seriously weak on its imagining of technology so far ahead, but I don't care: the Shakespearean level of familial and political skullduggery on a solar system scale does it for me.
porsane's review
3.0
A feminist libertarian wanders the solar system, always looking for the brass ring. This book, despite it's SF trappings, is more of a 1970s political novel than a sf one - the science is sketchy (typewriters and printed newspapers are still a thing). I found it hard to like anyone in this novel and like the central character says, it all runs in circles - there's no real resolution at the end. Very much a novel of it's time.
anesh's review
2.0
I just couldn't finish this book. I tried, I kept reading in the hope that something interesting will happen, some good will come out of it bit nope. What is the purpose of this book? Albeit, the main character is a hispanic (if there is still a racial division in that time) bisexual woman who seems to know what she wants but actually doesn't, but the Styths are a pretty borring warrior race, what is left of Earth is an Anarchy (and I'm just curious how that works out but that little detail is not important to the story, apparently, the writer is more interested in the Muslim based-off world of Styths) and the story has no freekin purpose. It keeps moving along but just like me it does nothing. Ugh don't even get me started on the writing...the forced dialogue, the lack of description when needed and all the times I found my self going from one scene to another without knowing it because hey, why mark such things.
christytidwell's review
1.0
I see that a lot of other people liked this book, but I had to force myself to finish it. I didn't care about a single one of the characters, the plot of meandering, there was no clear narrative drive or arc, and the writing wasn't very good, either. Plus, there's a scene where a couple of desperate people eat puppies.
Basically, the protagonist, Paula, gets a job she doesn't really want and gets herself into dangerous situations doing it, but before you know it she's no longer really doing that job because she's gotten pregnant by a Stythian man (a mutant from Uranus) and is going to live with him there, where she proceeds to live as a wife/slave/spy for nearly a third of the book. Finally, she gets to do more of the kind of thing she was hired to do and go back to Earth, but then fullscale war suddenly breaks out and she winds up on the run with a guy she used to work with and didn't really get along with, but now they're sleeping together (I don't know why). And then--again, suddenly--the war's over and the mutants are back. And then, and then, and then.... It's one crazy thing after another and there's no real preparation or climax to any of these things.
I didn't absolutely hate the book, but there wasn't really anything redeeming about it and I definitely wouldn't recommend it.
Basically, the protagonist, Paula, gets a job she doesn't really want and gets herself into dangerous situations doing it, but before you know it she's no longer really doing that job because she's gotten pregnant by a Stythian man (a mutant from Uranus) and is going to live with him there, where she proceeds to live as a wife/slave/spy for nearly a third of the book. Finally, she gets to do more of the kind of thing she was hired to do and go back to Earth, but then fullscale war suddenly breaks out and she winds up on the run with a guy she used to work with and didn't really get along with, but now they're sleeping together (I don't know why). And then--again, suddenly--the war's over and the mutants are back. And then, and then, and then.... It's one crazy thing after another and there's no real preparation or climax to any of these things.
I didn't absolutely hate the book, but there wasn't really anything redeeming about it and I definitely wouldn't recommend it.