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A review by wakenda
Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin
5.0
I really enjoyed this book, about a patriarchal society where women's rights have been taken away and a group of families of linguists teach their children to be native speakers of both Earth and Alien languages in order to be translators for humanity. I loved the combination of feminism, sci fi and linguistics, which is right up my alley, and I think the idea of creating a specifically feminine con lang for use in a sci fi universe (in contrast to something like Klingon) is neat. The ending was not very satisfying, since it focused on the government men instead of the linguist women who I'm a lot more invested in and didn't really wrap up anything, but it did make me want to go straight on to the next book, so that makes me just feel like it should be read as one big set.
However, if you read the kindle version and are reading the trilogy for the first time DO NOT read the afterword, which contains spoilers for the second book of the trilogy in the very first paragraph (and possibly more than that, but I stopped reading once I realized it was spoilery), which is incredibly bad form and should not have been published in book one without a warning. The preface is part of the novel, though, and you should definitely read that. I love the way the publication of the book itself (as described in the preface) is part of the fictional universe and it fit well with the way she opened each chapter with an excerpt from a primary document to establish and flesh out the world.
However, if you read the kindle version and are reading the trilogy for the first time DO NOT read the afterword, which contains spoilers for the second book of the trilogy in the very first paragraph (and possibly more than that, but I stopped reading once I realized it was spoilery), which is incredibly bad form and should not have been published in book one without a warning. The preface is part of the novel, though, and you should definitely read that. I love the way the publication of the book itself (as described in the preface) is part of the fictional universe and it fit well with the way she opened each chapter with an excerpt from a primary document to establish and flesh out the world.