sedeara 's review for:

The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk

3.0

---

All my college friends have read and lauded this book, so reading it myself felt a bit like visiting a place about which I'd heard lots and lots of stories. I think that if pagans were the type to write evangelical novels, they would read just like this book. At the outset, the world and characters seem so intriguing that you don't much care if there's a plot or not, as long as you get to learn a little more about them. Another interesting thing about this story is the way that Starhawk just plops you down into it, without giving the type of subtle explanation that other (more seasoned?) fiction writers include within the first few chapters. You have to read halfway through the book before even understanding exactly how Starhawk's utopic society works. I swayed between longing to live in this community (no poverty, no prejudice, lots of sex, and bisexuality as the norm) and feeling irritated that I had to spend 500 pages in some pagan woman's fantasy. Overall, this was one of those novels that cared more about the agenda than the story -- and that agenda was certainly not subtle. The heavy-handedness chafed me a bit, even if I do mostly agree with Starhawk's premise. I imagine that anyone who didn't agree with her premise wouldn't have the patience to get through the book, so it's destined to preach to the choir and no one else.