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Recent reading
Aug. 1st, 2017 11:55 pmAdulthood Rites by Octavia Butler (#2 in the Lilith's Brood series)
I know there's an alien species with three sexes in these books, but the humans are still heterosexual in a sort of claustrophobic way, like they're biologically destined to it. I mean, I'm mostly straight myself, though not completely, and there's at least a potential for something else for me that's completely lacking for all the characters here. Not to mention I do not feel the compulsive urge to pair up. It doesn't bother me if everyone in a book just happens to be straight, but here it's more "there's a man and a woman, of course they'll want to have sex! and of course men will abduct women to have sex with, that's just natural!" I find this view of people kind of depressing. The aliens actually also have a very standardized sexuality, where all of them form stable triads that are biologically bonded together. Uh, aside from that, there's some fairly interesting stuff where an alien-human child is conflicted about his heritage.
I feel like I'm being harsh on this book--maybe I'm misjudging it, I don't know?
Reindeer Moon by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Recced by a RL friend. This book set in the Ice Age actually has men who act less like "cavemen" than in the previous book. It's a coming-of-age story about a girl, and as a parallell story we get her life in the spirit world after she dies. The tension in the story comes from people trying to survive in harsh environments, and also from the relationships among a group of people who are partly kin and partly intermarried. I liked it! The main character has a temper and is headstrong, and sometimes makes bad decisions that have consequences, but they're not actually what gets her killed (this is not a spoiler, we learn early on that she dies fairly young). But she's also tenacious and skilled and fiercely cares about her little sister. The writing is pretty straightforward, but it grew on me, and the worldbuilding is interesting. I can't help compare the book to Kim Stanley Robinson's Shaman, which is the other Ice Age book I read fairly recently. They're different in some ways, but I can't decide which I like better.
I know there's an alien species with three sexes in these books, but the humans are still heterosexual in a sort of claustrophobic way, like they're biologically destined to it. I mean, I'm mostly straight myself, though not completely, and there's at least a potential for something else for me that's completely lacking for all the characters here. Not to mention I do not feel the compulsive urge to pair up. It doesn't bother me if everyone in a book just happens to be straight, but here it's more "there's a man and a woman, of course they'll want to have sex! and of course men will abduct women to have sex with, that's just natural!" I find this view of people kind of depressing. The aliens actually also have a very standardized sexuality, where all of them form stable triads that are biologically bonded together. Uh, aside from that, there's some fairly interesting stuff where an alien-human child is conflicted about his heritage.
I feel like I'm being harsh on this book--maybe I'm misjudging it, I don't know?
Reindeer Moon by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Recced by a RL friend. This book set in the Ice Age actually has men who act less like "cavemen" than in the previous book. It's a coming-of-age story about a girl, and as a parallell story we get her life in the spirit world after she dies. The tension in the story comes from people trying to survive in harsh environments, and also from the relationships among a group of people who are partly kin and partly intermarried. I liked it! The main character has a temper and is headstrong, and sometimes makes bad decisions that have consequences, but they're not actually what gets her killed (this is not a spoiler, we learn early on that she dies fairly young). But she's also tenacious and skilled and fiercely cares about her little sister. The writing is pretty straightforward, but it grew on me, and the worldbuilding is interesting. I can't help compare the book to Kim Stanley Robinson's Shaman, which is the other Ice Age book I read fairly recently. They're different in some ways, but I can't decide which I like better.
