rhodered's review
3.0
Really a 2 star but I'm giving it three for old time's sake, as it was one of the only space operas of the 1970s to feature a strong female lead along with multiple strong female secondary characters.
Good stuff: the series plot is very satisfyingly tied up in a crescendo of activity. We see into the fate of earth and its welfare system, the fate of many old friends from book one, and even an exciting path forward for the heroine.
Meh stuff: the dialog remains stiff at best. What did this author have against contractions? Also, exciting plot elements are mixed with utterly plodding interludes of administrative trivia and then everyone sitting around having a drink.
Infuriating stuff: although this is an exceedingly feminist book for its era, especially being an action adventure by a male author, it was also (possibly unwittingly) sexist. The series started with the heroine's childhood and then escape from the bad guys. The series is largely told with her as the central character. It's her adventure we are following. And she is acknowledged out of all the characters to be the most incredible all around - the smartest, best at unarmed fighting, the most emotionally mature for her age, the best at disguises, etc. She's also one of the wealthiest and most politically powerful people on several planets. All that, and she's a famous heroine of the underground due to something she did as a teen.
Ok, so why then throughout this book is she referred to constantly as Tregare's wife??? Every time anyone asks who she is (which happens frequently), that's how she identifies herself. It's also how all the people around her and her husband identify her. Never is her husband described as her husband. He is Tregare, she is the wife. Argh!
Now her husband is no slouch. But he is at best her equal, and generally not even that. He's a strong number two. She has more education, more money, more unarmed fighting skills, higher space ship gunnery marks, etc. she's also a better rounded human being, while he is purely a military leader.
How did a book about a kick ass heroine become nominally a book about a leader's wife? (I say nominally because she pretty much tells him what to do all the time and runs a bunch of stuff herself.)
Also, when they decide to have a baby, why is she, automatically and without any discussion at all, the primary caregiver? So primary that she investigates how to care for a child and be a parent on her own without him present in chats with other primary caregivers, who are also all 100% female. Then when she gets to earth, she and her husband are so predictably busy, and likely to remain so for years, that they can't really look after or closely parent this child she has insisted on having at age 22. That's stupid. She knew she would be busy. She knew she had decades with their medicine to have kids in the future. So why even bother with a baby now? The author tries to pass it off as 'human instinct to procreate during wartime' to which I say, nuts to you buddy! No parent wants a child in an unstable situation.
Anyway, I am utterly sure that this book seemed so feminist in the mid 1970s that most people didn't see these obvious flaws. I am happy and grateful that in my own lifetime women - and men - have come so very much further. In certain Western countries anyway.
Good stuff: the series plot is very satisfyingly tied up in a crescendo of activity. We see into the fate of earth and its welfare system, the fate of many old friends from book one, and even an exciting path forward for the heroine.
Meh stuff: the dialog remains stiff at best. What did this author have against contractions? Also, exciting plot elements are mixed with utterly plodding interludes of administrative trivia and then everyone sitting around having a drink.
Infuriating stuff: although this is an exceedingly feminist book for its era, especially being an action adventure by a male author, it was also (possibly unwittingly) sexist. The series started with the heroine's childhood and then escape from the bad guys. The series is largely told with her as the central character. It's her adventure we are following. And she is acknowledged out of all the characters to be the most incredible all around - the smartest, best at unarmed fighting, the most emotionally mature for her age, the best at disguises, etc. She's also one of the wealthiest and most politically powerful people on several planets. All that, and she's a famous heroine of the underground due to something she did as a teen.
Ok, so why then throughout this book is she referred to constantly as Tregare's wife??? Every time anyone asks who she is (which happens frequently), that's how she identifies herself. It's also how all the people around her and her husband identify her. Never is her husband described as her husband. He is Tregare, she is the wife. Argh!
Now her husband is no slouch. But he is at best her equal, and generally not even that. He's a strong number two. She has more education, more money, more unarmed fighting skills, higher space ship gunnery marks, etc. she's also a better rounded human being, while he is purely a military leader.
How did a book about a kick ass heroine become nominally a book about a leader's wife? (I say nominally because she pretty much tells him what to do all the time and runs a bunch of stuff herself.)
Also, when they decide to have a baby, why is she, automatically and without any discussion at all, the primary caregiver? So primary that she investigates how to care for a child and be a parent on her own without him present in chats with other primary caregivers, who are also all 100% female. Then when she gets to earth, she and her husband are so predictably busy, and likely to remain so for years, that they can't really look after or closely parent this child she has insisted on having at age 22. That's stupid. She knew she would be busy. She knew she had decades with their medicine to have kids in the future. So why even bother with a baby now? The author tries to pass it off as 'human instinct to procreate during wartime' to which I say, nuts to you buddy! No parent wants a child in an unstable situation.
Anyway, I am utterly sure that this book seemed so feminist in the mid 1970s that most people didn't see these obvious flaws. I am happy and grateful that in my own lifetime women - and men - have come so very much further. In certain Western countries anyway.
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