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eor6. Sheri S. Tepper "The Gate To Women's Country"
I finished this book last night. The first few chapters are very literary with stilted prose with a lilac tint, not quite plum. Once through that the book settles down into a readable cadence kind of plodding along through the first half. It's only after we get into the second half and are introduced to a slew more characters that the pace picks up.
I felt the climax of the book could have used a couple of tweaks just to make the timing of critical events a bit more believable.
To a certain extent I didn't buy some of the world building. It felt like the town populations couldn't be supported on the described amount of exploited land. Also at one point the houses were described as not having windows on the 2nd floor to keep in heat, which would be challenging for a sub-electric civilization. Those upstairs rooms would be dark, stifling in summer, and I'd think very likely germ factories. But then again, in a different part of the book someone on the second floor is looking out on someplace, so maybe it's not poor world building just confused world building.
I think it's fairly debatable whether this book is a dystopian novel or not a dystopian novel. The details of that debate involve a lot of spoilers, so I'm not going to go into it. But I think you can argue either way.
Overall, not a book I'll read again but a fun one to debate about parts of the world and the dystopia or not thing.
I finished this book last night. The first few chapters are very literary with stilted prose with a lilac tint, not quite plum. Once through that the book settles down into a readable cadence kind of plodding along through the first half. It's only after we get into the second half and are introduced to a slew more characters that the pace picks up.
I felt the climax of the book could have used a couple of tweaks just to make the timing of critical events a bit more believable.
To a certain extent I didn't buy some of the world building. It felt like the town populations couldn't be supported on the described amount of exploited land. Also at one point the houses were described as not having windows on the 2nd floor to keep in heat, which would be challenging for a sub-electric civilization. Those upstairs rooms would be dark, stifling in summer, and I'd think very likely germ factories. But then again, in a different part of the book someone on the second floor is looking out on someplace, so maybe it's not poor world building just confused world building.
I think it's fairly debatable whether this book is a dystopian novel or not a dystopian novel. The details of that debate involve a lot of spoilers, so I'm not going to go into it. But I think you can argue either way.
Overall, not a book I'll read again but a fun one to debate about parts of the world and the dystopia or not thing.
