Reviews

He, She and It by Marge Piercy

rwxtd's review

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I simply do not have the patience for this 

tricapra's review

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5.0

What an absolutely fantastic novel. I liked this even more than Woman on the Edge of Time, and that's saying something. Filled to the brim with complex, diverse female characters and compelling themes. A treatise on what it means to be human, and to love. A plausible sci-fi dystopia, religious mysticism, cyborgs, assassins, romance... This book had pretty much everything I could ask for?

Why aren't you reading this book right now?

gab1one's review against another edition

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challenging inspiring mysterious reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? N/A
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

Flawed but interesting book. I was struggling a lot with many of the scifi tech elements, as I felt the author didn't really care for them and put them in mostly for genre convention. I was able to connect much better with the secondary story in middle age Prague. 
The book features many interesting female characters with different motives and ways to handle the challenges life throws in their way. 

csweet49's review

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3.0

A bit too long. Some repetition that didn't seem necessary. Lots of detail of plot action early that's missing at the 2nd climax.

snance's review

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5.0

One of my favorites

toopunkrockforshul's review

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reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Overall I did enjoy this book, the premise and the worldbuilding was really interesting. I also really like how the
story of the Golem of Prague was woven into the this story.
Rating it lower because some of the language was out dated and also just clunky at times. It was very much a product of its time I think, progressive for the feminism of 90s but in retrospect makes me cringe a little.

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rmf1723's review

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slow-paced
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No

3.0

susannnochka's review

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4.0

3 1/2 stars rounded up rather than down. I wish I'd read it at 22.

cryptidgenderman's review against another edition

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1.0

in total, this took me six days to read. it must’ve been the longest six days of my entire life. I never write reviews on Goodreads, but this is just too long for my book journal. The only reason I managed to get all the way through was just for me to know that I read it all the way and I still hated it. I never rate books 1 star because I am afraid to say that I’ve wasted my money or my time, but this book deserves it. this has such an interesting plot and it could’ve gone so far with it, but it just didn’t which is probably the most disappointing thing.

It should not take a book 300+ pages for it to finally catch my interest. And of course by interesting, I don’t mean captivating I mean, somewhat rememberable of which there were five scenes in total. when it wasn’t being rememberable, It was being problematic and if it wasn’t being problematic, It was being confusing.

I have read the 557 pages of this book, and I still have no idea how this world works or What it’s like. All I know is that the multiple mentions of the failed experiment being referred to as autistic didn’t sit right with me. another thing that answer right with me was the way that she writes women. Apparently she supposed to be this feminist writer, but personally I found the world as she’s created is so sexist.

The characters were annoying as hell, and not to mention that one of them was a whole ass paedophile. The writing was not good and if it weren’t for my reading goal, I would not have read this in 1 million years/would’ve DNF’d it after page 1. You would not catch me, remembering what the hell even happened in the book. And I personally love POV chapters but Malhaz did not deserve her own chapters. They were useless and Joseph story didn’t make any sense.

this is obviously not to defer anyone from reading it but personally I’m throwing this off my bookshelf as soon as I can .

rebeccacider's review

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2.0

Read this on a lark because I am halfway through writing my own human/robot love story and wanted to see how this classic work tackled it. Normally reading fiction similar to what you're writing is a terrible idea, but my story is well enough established that I decided to indulge my curiosity.

I enjoyed the B-plot of this novel, in which one of the characters retells the story of the Golem of Prague. The main narrative lost my interest about halfway through.

Before I picked up the title, I came across controversy about whether literary writers like Piercy, Atwood, etc. write "real" SF/F. I wrestled with this question for a while before setting it aside as irrelevant. There's plenty of successful genre fiction written for a general or literary audience. Piercy's cyberpumk-inspired world isn't very original, but I don't think original worldbuilding makes or breaks a story. She infodumps on every other page, but some genre writers do that all the time (especially in cyberpunk!)

So the reason I didn't care for this book isn't because it's bad science fiction (it might be, but whatever). It's because the characters stopped surprising me and the central ideas of the book didn't take me anywhere I hadn't been before.