Customer Reviews

Commitment Hour

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I think some of the other reviewers have missed the purpose of this book. For me, it was a very powerful statement about how our modern society shapes the relationships between men and women.

It is not, however, a ripping yarn. The plot develops gradually, Gardner spending a lot of time developing the characters and setting out the relationships between the characters. He does this really well. (Okay, so Lord Rashid of Spark is a bit weak.) The storyline does, however, gradually gather pace and it literally rips through the last 50 pages or so. Further, while the reader can see a lot of what is coming, Gardner keeps adding little twists and turns, and saves one big twist for the end.

Good stuff!!

This is James Alan Gardner's early work - unlike his Expendable series, it does not feature Festina Ramos, however, the League of Peoples is briefly mentioned.

The basic plot for this novel is that Earth around the 24th-25th century faces a catastrophe (overpopulation, disease, etc.) and the League of Peoples offers Earthlings a way out - those who so want can leave the planet and live among aliens learning their technology and cultural standpoints. Not everyone leaves and those who stay are left without the support of a developed civilization and the world ends up resembling that of the Middle Ages with a history (and therefore artifacts) of modern and futuristic science. At some point, those who left the Earth decide to come back and conduct social experiments using extremely advanced technology.

One of these experients is a little village whose inhabitants change gender every year up until they are 20, when having experienced being both a man and a woman during their lifetime, they decide to become one permanently. The twist is that in addition to become male or female, one can choose to become a Neut - a person of both genders. Thankfully though, even though the plot revolves around changing genders, the emphasis of the novel is more on great technology, a society that has leaped quickly forward and then rapidly backwards, and the politics of people in such a situation. The main character is very believable and his (her?) adventures make for a page-turner.

The atmosphere of this novel was similar to that of Trapped - it even features the Spark Lords. My biggest hangup about reading this novel, even though I loved all of other novels by James Alan Gardner, was that its description does not really indicate that the novel is set in the same universe as the others. I was very pleasantly surprised and The Commitment Hour was a fast read. The ending was somewhat surprising and definitely not cliche.

I give it 5 stars among Gardner's books, and 4 overall. I recommend it highly for the author's fans.

James Alan Gardner's Commitment Hour certainly isn't your run-of-the-mill science fiction novel. The author provides an interesting and sometimes uncomfortable look at the role of gender in society, but I'm not sure he is entirely successful, nor am I sure if there was some highly perceptive point he was trying to make or if he found any real answers to his own questions in this regard. The first few chapters failed to spark my interest, but in time Gardner did manage to bring a sense of life to the story and create something interesting albeit ultimately somewhat unfulfilling.

The setting is twenty-fifth century earth, a somewhat primitive and naturalistic era borne of the fact that some seventy percent of the population has left for other planets in the wake of alien visitation; the technology of man's past has largely been abandoned, its relics consigned to the stuff of legend. The aliens and the facts of the big migration are only mentioned and never really emphasized; rather, it is the unique society of Tober Cove that demands all of the author's attention. Like most new earth societies, Tober Cove is a land of farmers and fishermen; here, a priestess marks the changing of seasons in primitive rituals and the law is upheld by a representative of the legendary Patriarch. Tober Cove is unique in one regard, however; here, the children alternate their sex between male and female for the first twenty years of their lives, after which time, at the crucial Commitment Hour, each one chooses whether to live as a male, a female, or - on rare occasions - both. Neuts are rare indeed, for those who choose a hermaphroditic life are banished from the land and threatened with instant death should they return.

Fullin stands on the brink of his Commitment Hour choice, as does his life's partner Cappie. Fullin is confused enough by his feelings toward Cappie, feelings which vary significantly from year to year as his sex changes, but life gets infinitely more confusing when a scientist comes to witness and study the Commitment Hour ceremonies, bringing alongside him a Neut banished from Tober Cove twenty years earlier. Murder and other disquieting horror visits the village, and by the time Fullin and Cappie are ready to be flown to the mysterious Birds Home to make their final commitments, dramatic change indeed is blowing in the wind. It is only in the final chapters that a real science fiction element enters the story, but this mainly serves as a means for wrapping up the gender study the novel basically consists of.

The story can be confusing at times, and the mixing and confusion of sexual perspectives never truly delivers any revelations of insight. The fact that Fullin, ostensibly a male at this time, is troubled by homosexual feelings from both sides of the gender line, combined with the whole society's antipathy toward Neuts, strikes a discordant chord, and few of Gardner's sexual questions find answers in his strikingly unusual conclusion. Commitment Hour is a strange novel, a book of probing questions without ultimate answers, but such is the very state of society itself. Some readers will no doubt find this novel an uncomfortable read, but its novelty and sense of unusual purpose make of it a story worth pursuing and pondering over.

I really enjoyed this book. It sucked me in and kept me guessing up until the end. I found the idea of gender-switching humans to be quite original, at least from my own reading history. :-) The concept of gender, and the ideas we traditionally associate with it, has always fascinated me. One thing I like about this book is that it doesn't shy away from the fact that we DO tend to categorize and compartmentalize people according to sex.

It was nice to see that even in their male personas, the people of Tober Cove were very caring and loving toward their children, effectively dispelling the myth that only women can be nurturing.

The book also touches on belief systems and how strongly people will hold onto their ideas even when faced with contradictory evidence, but the main character also seems to realize that faith really has a life of its own, a purpose, independent of "proof" either for or against.

I've enjoyed other books by this author, so I picked this one up. He's taking on an unusual theme--the nature of male vs female, with a religious/ritualistic culture in the background, by way of discussing superstition and faith. Lots of loaded issues. So you know, this means it could be really, really good, or totally take a dive. I'm afraid that I think the latter happened. The main characer is sympathetic enough, and it's interesting to explore his/her male and female sides. The author manages to avoid horrendous stereotypes, while keeping male and female traits recognizable, which is a coup. But I did keep having flash-backs to the '60s and all the feminist rhetoric flying about then (I AM a feminist--just don't want to hear about it day-in, day-out, thank you). Still, that was OK. The culture and the world had enough details to be convincing, but it was still extememely weird. This can be a good thing. Here, it was... OK, but the oddness seemed to spin out of control towards the denouement. It just became so bizarre that I lost my suspension of disbelief.

If you are interested in unusual themes and strange customs and cultures, and even weirder twists at endings, then by all means try this book. Sadly, I can't recommend it.

Set in the same universe as Gardners's Expendable, Commitment Hour takes place in a small village on post-emigration Earth, where the inhabitants have one unique feature- they change sex each year until age twenty, when they must choose male, female or hermaphrodite. CH traces this most important day in two people's lives, and it turns out to be a bit more wild than they expected.

There are enough surprises in the book that telling much more of the plot would involve spoilers. Overall, it's a pretty good effort- the world is nicely worked, and the two main characters seem fairly well realized. The book falls down a bit on the rest of the characters- the Spark Lord especially seems to be amazingly clueless/stupid for a scientist, and many of the others seem to be cardboard cutouts used only to move the plot along.

One point I did appreciate- those who choose hermaphrodite are tremendously oppressed, usually driven from the village or killed. It would have been very easy to make the hermaphroditic characters saints, just to drive home the "Discrimination is bad" angle. Many other writers would have done this but Gardner wisely avoids this trap.

For those who haven't read it, pick up Gardner's other book, Expendable. Although the book becomes sillier as it progresses, the first fifty pages are just screamingly funny.

This book was pure joy for me to read. I loved everything about it -- the world, the characters, the very idiosyncratic voice. After I came down from my reading high I found myself poking holes in some of the assertions about the world, suspect of the ways Gardner chose his characters to discourage the reader from thinking about aspects of it, but that didn't dampen my love for the experience. However, I cannot talk about the book without spoiling something that the back cover plays very coy with: the nature of the Commitment. It's revealed on page two, but if you don't want that spoiled, don't read any further. (Also, don't read any other reviews; I've only seen one that avoided the spoiler.)

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The Commitment Fullin must make is choosing his gender for the rest of his life. This year he is male; but last year he was female, and in fact every summer of his life he has gone off with his gods and had his gender switched. Every person of Tober Cove spends their childhood this way, learning what it means to be both male and female (all aspects of each -- sexual exploration is encouraged, and in every person's last year as a female she bears a child), and then at twenty each person must commit to one gender or the other for the rest of his/her life.

(Technically, a person can also commit to "both" and become a hermaphrodite; but 150 years ago that choice was outlawed, and any person that chooses both is immediately exiled from the community and can be killed on site if they return.)

So this book is one in the long line of SF novels that looks at gender roles -- one of my favorite SF conversations to have.

It's a first-person narrative, and that narration is, I think, the best thing about the book. Fullin is an incredibly well-realized character with a very distinct voice I found completely charming. The first page is an absolute gem; I'd quote it here, but that would take up way too much space. He's also a bit of a jackass, and the fact that I still loved reading him makes Gardner's achievement more impressive. And through a quirk I will not spoil, we also get to be inside Fullin's head as a woman. She is much more likable than he is; she is also, in both obvious and subtle ways, a very different person than Fullin as a man.

One of the many things that make Fullin different in each gender is that Tober Cove has very strict gender roles -- stricter than the rest of the world, where the gender-switching does not take place. Men fish and hunt; women are caregivers. Men are politicians; women are priestesses. But, because the characters have practiced both roles all their lives, the system is not dystopic; after all, if you really want to be Mayor someday, you can just choose to be male at your Commitment ceremony. If you want to be Mayor and a stay-at-home Mom, well, the Mocking Priestess has a saying: "You can get what you want most in life; not even the gods can guarantee you get your second choice too."

There isn't anything tremendously groundbreaking about the treatment of gender here; most of the book focuses on the lost third choice, and what that loss has done to warp an otherwise utopic society. Still, I loved the way Gardner handled it because many of the characters were so conscious of the processes at work; Leeta, the Mocking Priestess, and Fullin-as-a-woman all have wonderful moments where they become exasperated at the outsiders' confusion about how gender works in Tober Cove and break character, so to speak; they fill their roles to the hilt, but they do it consciously, because that keeps their society in balance.

That self-awareness isn't only limited to gender roles either. This is science fiction, for all the talk of gods and demons, and the characters know that too. The gender-switching process is a technological rather than mystical one, and generally in books like this the process of discovering the technology underlying the religion causes people to lose faith; I loved the way Gardner created characters whose faith is elastic. Early in the book an outsider dismisses the solstice dance as "charming" neo-Paganism, but Fullin responds with:

"Everyone knows its not hard to make the gods sound ridiculous. It just takes sarcasm, exaggeration, and a determination to be vulgar. . . But that's kid's stuff. . . After a while, as with most things at thirteen, the memory of how you behaved makes you squirm; even if you know that seasons come from a tilting planet whirling around the sun, the old stories still mean something to you. . . The gods aren't jokes; they're people you walk around with every day. Insulting them is like insulting family."

And the religion the characters follow, neo-Pagan or not, artificially constructed or not, is one I can believe keeps the characters warm at night. The solstice dance; the way the Patriarch's Man and the Mocking Priestess balance each other; the whole ritual Hush for Mistress Snow; Gardner shows how those pieces, so easily mocked, bind the community together. It's not a perfect community -- people are people, and every community has its misfits, its damaged souls; and, of course, there is the unsightly scar of the outlawed third choice. And as I mentioned at the beginning, Gardner shaped his world very conveniently so he would not have to address a significant chunk of his characters' identity -- their sexual identity. But my overall experience was one of warmth, and hope, and joy, and I loved that.

I'm a fan of all the League of Peoples books, but held off on reading Commitment Hour for a long time because of the negative reviews written about it. I shouldn't have. While the book isn't as good as James Alan Gardner's best, it's a quick, fun, well-written story. I would recommend that people start with some of his other League of Peoples books first, but his fans shouldn't pass on Commitment Hour.

Gardner is really growing on me. I had "Expendable," his first book on my shelf for about five years. Recently, I pulled it down, opened it, and was blown away. Mid-way through, I realized that I needed to get more books by this author. As a result, I purchased "Commitment Hour."

This is his second book. It is written in first person perspective, like Expendable. It takes place in the same universe. However, it is quite different.

I had some trouble, initially, with the concepts. I almost put it down several times, thinking it was too bizarre for my tastes. Warning, spoiler coming! OK, here is the trick: the humans in this society switch their sex back and forth each year. Yes, that's right. The Commitment of the title is the year (and hour) that they must commit to one sex or the other (you'll figure this out pretty soon in the book-- there are a lot of other things that occur). Now, if you're anything at all like me, your initial reaction will be to say "I wonder what else Amazon has for sale." Please don't.

This is really a great book. It has intrigue, murder, humor, and a sly look at sexual roles in our society all wrapped up between the pages. There really is a lot more beneath the cover, you might say (hah! a double entendre!).

It's the future and in a backward place on Earth a small town goes about its daily activities. Fullin, the musician hero, is about ready to make the committment - the decision as to which sex they will be the rest of their lives. Only strangers appear from afar and over time he finds out that reality is not what it appear nor what he could even imagine. Allegedly a citizen went off and returned 24 hours a different sex. The reality of this was something different. Without giving away the plot it involves cloning, brain wave transferance, three sexes and experiments by an advanced civilization.