LeGuin here focuses her inimitable world-building skills on two conflicting societies of the future—implying, of course, their relevance to the present. Far less preachy than 1974's The Dispossessed, this is equally intelligent and ambitious. It lacks, however, the flawless integration of storyline and interspersed folk-material that characterized 1969's The Left Hand of Darkness. The novel is set in northern California in some far distant future that has been shaped by earthquakes and social upheaval. There are computers and contraceptives, tanks and antibiotics, but this is a world governed by human customs, not by technological "progress." The two societies LeGuin describes are both tribal, though she prevents us from thinking of either as "primitive." As in Shevek's role as mediator between the planets Urres and Anarres in The Dispossessed, the two cultures in conflict here are observed by a narrator not wholly part of either world. "North Owl" (one of LeGuin's rare female protagonists) is a "half-person"—raised by a woman of the matriarchal Valley (a herdsmen/farmer tribe), but fathered by a passing Condor warrior. She grows up without a father in her mother's nature-respecting world; later, in her rebellious adolescence, she joins her father and becomes a woman of the war-seeking Condors, marrying, and bearing a child. Ultimately, assuming the new name of "Woman Coming Home," she travels with her own small daughter back to The Valley, as the precarious, war-centered economy of the Condors begins to collapse, taking tribal solidarity along with it. Because LeGuin is adapting relatively familiar (American Indian) paradigms, there are fewer sheer triumphs of wit and imagination than in such science-fiction novels as Left Hand of Darkness, which have offered the geography, customs and languages of entirely invented worlds. In addition, the bulky apparatus of poems, folk tales, maps, illustrations, glossary—even a taped cassette of "Valley" music (unavailable for review, but not performed, at any rate, by Moon Unit Zappa)—often overwhelms what should be central here: the delicate, beautifully told story of North Owl's education. Still, the heroine's efforts to strike a balance between opposing claims (between mother and father, spirit and mind, husbandry and conquest, peace and war) mark a return by LeGuin to the themes and techniques of her major work. And no one does this type of utopian near-allegory better.
Pub Date: March 29, 2001
ISBN: 0-520-22735-2
Page Count: 534
Publisher: Univ. of California
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.
Brown completes his science-fiction trilogy with another intricately plotted and densely populated tome, this one continuing the focus on a rebellion against the imperious Golds.
This last volume is incomprehensible without reference to the first two. Briefly, Darrow of Lykos, aka Reaper, has been “carved” from his status as a Red (the lowest class) into a Gold. This allows him to infiltrate the Gold political infrastructure…but a game’s afoot, and at the beginning of the third volume, Darrow finds himself isolated and imprisoned for his insurgent activities. He longs both for rescue and for revenge, and eventually he gets both. Brown is an expert at creating violent set pieces whose cartoonish aspects (“ ‘Waste ’em,’ Sevro says with a sneer” ) are undermined by the graphic intensity of the savagery, with razors being a favored instrument of combat. Brown creates an alternative universe that is multilayered and seething with characters who exist in a shadow world between history and myth, much as in Frank Herbert’s Dune. This world is vaguely Teutonic/Scandinavian (with characters such as Magnus, Ragnar, and the Valkyrie) and vaguely Roman (Octavia, Romulus, Cassius) but ultimately wholly eclectic. At the center are Darrow, his lover, Mustang, and the political and military action of the Uprising. Loyalties are conflicted, confusing, and malleable. Along the way we see Darrow become more heroic and daring and Mustang, more charismatic and unswerving, both agents of good in a battle against forces of corruption and domination. Among Darrow’s insights as he works his way to a position of ascendancy is that “as we pretend to be brave, we become so.”
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-345-53984-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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