Customer Reviews

The Furies (Holdfast Chronicles)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Furies is a book that makes you think. I found it captivating and couldn' t put it down once I started it. Alldera is a heroin complete with self-doubt and other human failings. Her relationships with Sheel, Eykar Bek and her own people, the Free Fems make for great action and emotion. A totally believable character. I found the Riding Women of the grasslands facinating.

Hard to believe anyone could find anything in it boring enough to skip through. I tore through it in a day. The characters are especially well drawn and distinct. I don't know how Charnas does it.

The themes aren't wishy-washy and wimpy. Don't you want to yell at the book sometimes? Or at least what the people do and think? Yes. That's good.

Some have found the sequel, "The Conqueror's Child" to be better, or "Motherlines" before it, but this one is in my opinion the the best, most brutal one of the bunch. It's fast and action-packed, one of those great showdowns, vindications, coups de grace, whatever.

Sorry this is a patchy review, I tried!

I received this in hardback as a gift and I'm glad I didn't spend the money on it. Paperback, I would have bought. The characters seem less developed and the conclusions a little too convenient for my tastes.

A superficial look would result in discarding the book as a summary of the irrational ideology separatist lesbian and feminists tend to harbour. (I have met some so I can compare with real life.) But apart of revealing the abstruse ideology of these social fringe group the book does more: it captures the reader in a world of struggle of a formerly oppressed group against the dominant group and exposes the underlying ethics or nonethics beneeth. The atrocities described in this book are real, happening today in various countries torn by civil war, be it in the former jugoslavia, in ruanda or in afganistan. This book sheds light on the sociolocal and psychological dynamics and this is its very strenght. Apart from that it is one of the very few books where I skipped whole chapters because of boredom - but still was intrigued ennough later to return and find out what actually happened in the story. Even decieded to buy a sequel.

But then I collect queer s/f and fantasy books.