There's always some trepidation when one begins to re-read a
fondly-remembered book. Will it hold up? Will it be as good as I
remember? Happily, Ms. Arnason's wonderful prose soon caught me
once again in her spell....
Lixia, the viewpoint character, is a Hawaiian anthropologist from an
Earth still recovering from the excesses of the 20th century. She's
nerving herself up to enter her first alien village at Sigma Draconis --
'There was no point in sneaking around. If they caught me spying, I'd be
in real trouble. The best thing was to walk right in.
The technique hadn't worked in New Jersey, of course. The people there
had tried to sacrifice me to their god, the Destroyer of Cities...'
Nia, a woman of the Iron People, is a smith and a pervert - she once loved
a man. Her neighbors drove her from their village in disgrace. Now
she has a smithy near a village of the Copper People -- the village Lixia had
come to study. Lixia's first contact doesn't go well -- she is driven out. Nia
takes her in, befriends her, and they become travel companions. The next
village they visit is kinder:
"This person without fur is amazing. She knows nothing about
anything. But she is willing to listen, and she doesn't interrupt."
Lixia and Nia are joined by Dexter Seawarrior, Ph.D., an Angeleno
aborigine. His people prize mellowness and truth; Dexter is devious
and ambitious. He left his tribe, went to school, and is now a tenured
professor at Berkeley....
The book is filled with complicated people, some of them human,muddling
through life.
"When a shamaness of an alien village, having handled for the moment
the problem of an alien intruder, walks away complaining aloud, 'Why
do these things always happen to me?' the reader knows she's in
trustworthy hands. High marks."
fondly-remembered book. Will it hold up? Will it be as good as I
remember? Happily, Ms. Arnason's wonderful prose soon caught me
once again in her spell....
Lixia, the viewpoint character, is a Hawaiian anthropologist from an
Earth still recovering from the excesses of the 20th century. She's
nerving herself up to enter her first alien village at Sigma Draconis --
'There was no point in sneaking around. If they caught me spying, I'd be
in real trouble. The best thing was to walk right in.
The technique hadn't worked in New Jersey, of course. The people there
had tried to sacrifice me to their god, the Destroyer of Cities...'
Nia, a woman of the Iron People, is a smith and a pervert - she once loved
a man. Her neighbors drove her from their village in disgrace. Now
she has a smithy near a village of the Copper People -- the village Lixia had
come to study. Lixia's first contact doesn't go well -- she is driven out. Nia
takes her in, befriends her, and they become travel companions. The next
village they visit is kinder:
"This person without fur is amazing. She knows nothing about
anything. But she is willing to listen, and she doesn't interrupt."
Lixia and Nia are joined by Dexter Seawarrior, Ph.D., an Angeleno
aborigine. His people prize mellowness and truth; Dexter is devious
and ambitious. He left his tribe, went to school, and is now a tenured
professor at Berkeley....
The book is filled with complicated people, some of them human,muddling
through life.
"When a shamaness of an alien village, having handled for the moment
the problem of an alien intruder, walks away complaining aloud, 'Why
do these things always happen to me?' the reader knows she's in
trustworthy hands. High marks."
