Customer Reviews

Golden Witchbreed

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

 

 

This is the story of Lynne de Lisle Christie, the first of Earth's envoys to Oerthe, a primitive world on a planet half a galaxy from Earth. Presenting herself at the court of the Crown of the South, Christie's life quickly teeters into the hands of those motivated by beliefs, assumptions and thoughts alien and unknown. Factions in the Southland would rather that she were dead, or defamed never to return. Others feel that now that Earth has visited Oerthe, there is no way that the clock can be turned back. But all are quite wary of Earth and its technologies, and a current of hostility runs deep. As events unfold, at one point Christie finds herself among the ruins of Oerthes anchient civilization and realizes that Earth has made a very, very large mistake.

This is a fun, engaging story. And to one of the readers who posted earlier, there IS a sequel to this book. It is called "Ancient Light", and was published in 1987 by Arrow Books, from London, England. I didn't see it listed at all on Amazon, though....

I've loved this book ever since it first appeared back in the 1980s. Mary Gentle keeps the suspense going well and her level of control is startling for a (then) tyro writer. At the time of its publication serious xeno-anthropological SF was unusual - we now have C J Cherryh's 'Foreigner' series and others - and even today the book stands out as one of the best of its kind. The sequel (Ancient Light), unusually, is spectacularly good, and is a remarkable deconstruction of all that was built up in Golden Witchbreed. I've been disappointed by several other books by Mary Gentle, but the recent novel "Ash " is a return to form.

I absolutely love this book. It's the kind of book that will suck you right in as soon as you start reading. Golden Witchbreed is complex in its construction, but easy to follow because of how information is doled out one piece at a time. The planet on which the story takes place seems to come to life in front of the reader. The author did an excellent job in that respect. Irregularities in grammar from the standard American English (as well as British English) crop up on a regular basis in this book, but in general they don't interfere with the reading. The front flap says something comparing Golden Witchbreed to Frank Herbert's Dune, but it's not a valid comparison because the world of Mary Gentle's book is so much more complex and vividly described than Dune ever was. A wonderful book for any Sci Fi fan, or anybody else, no matter what they generally read. The book pulled me in and I couldn't put it down. I think everyone else who takes the time to find Golden Witchbreed will have the same experience.

Checked this book out of the library because I was intrigued by the cover art. What's inside is pretty good, too. It has a nice, complex political plot -- lots of intrigue and treachery, lots of characters. It's about an envoy from Earth to a pre-technological planet. Her job is to convince these people to trade with Earth. But there have been some very basic misunderstandings on Earth's part about the aliens' culture, and their reactions are quite different than expected. I would have liked the book if the aliens were just a little more ALIEN, if you know what I mean, but the author has created a very convincing world. "The Golden Witchbreed" is a pretty good read.

A huge journey across a vast alien world is a theme more consistent with fantasy than SF but Mary Gentle brings it off beautifully. Her aliens have a lot of 'classic' features but they still seem very fresh and real. She makes the journey emotional without ever making it sentimental, we are engaged by the envoy's travails but are still uplifted by them and personally, I found myself envious. The more she travels, the more about the history of the world we find. It's a fascinating journey, albeit a long one.

If you enjoyed this, you might also like "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula Le Guin, which shares many features with this book.

I love this book and its sequel Ancient Light. Beautifully written, for me this is Mary Gentle at her best. I first read these books in the 1980's and have since revisted them. I often wish that Gentle would revisit them too.

Science fiction and fantasy usually take us to worlds that are different from our own, and so the skill of worldbuilding is a must for authors in these genres. There are dangers to this, though, particularly if authors fall too much in love with their creations, and this leads to the common failings of making your novel into a tour guide rather than a story, and refusing to allow the story to change that world.

I think that Golden Witchbreed falls into the former trap. It is certainly an ambitious creation, filled with linguistic and cultural details about the world of Orthe that testify to Gentle's impressive imagination (there's even a glossary in the back to help the reader with the many unfamiliar terms). The trouble is that the worldbuilding is done at the expense of the story, rather than in support of it, a problem that Ursula LeGuin's masterpiece The Left Hand of Darkness, to which Golden Witchbreed is lavishly compared in the blurbs at the front, does not have.

Because there really isn't much in the way of story or theme in this novel. There is an elaborate plot, but it is unmemorable: The Earth envoy Lynne Christie has been sent to negotiate with the natives of Orthe, and she gets wrapped up in their politics and rivalries. So she moves around a lot as the political intrigues swirl around her, giving Gentle the opportunity to describe her world in great detail. But there's no real theme here, no real discussion of ideas, as there is in LeGuin's work.

The result is a very long novel that is neither good nor bad, and in which only the setting is really memorable. It's clever, like most successful science fiction novels, since this is a genre that often rewards cleverness over substance. But a little less of the alien and a little more theme would have helped this novel immensely.

This unfortunately out-of-print book came into my possession at an early age and is a great favorite of mine. It is a fascinating and convincing culture that Mary Gentle has created. If you can find this book it is well worth the read!

I picked this up on the basis of a review that said it was an entertaining read, but I had to push myself to finish it.

Many of the problems I had with it are perhaps typical of inexperienced writers. The protagonist lets herself be carried along by the plot rather than trying to shape it, meanwhile trekking over most of the map, in flabby fantasy novel fashion. Characterization is by a 'tell don't show' method. That was particularly annoying; for one example, Christie (the narrator) tells us that Sethin Falkyr Talkul is 'a neat cold man' as soon as she meets him. We have no idea what she's basing this on---the way he dresses? Parts his hair? Refuses to shake hands? (Okay, he's an alien so he wouldn't shake hands, but you get the idea.) Later I'm pretty sure she described him as 'witty,' but if he ever said anything funny, I didn't notice. You get the feeling that the writer has one idea of the characters in her head but can't quite translate it into giving them distinguishable personalities on the page.

Another thing that bugged me, that's probably also a sign of inexperience, was Christie's way of reporting some events in a dry matter-of-fact fashion when I thought she ought to be having an emotional reaction to them, which made me feel like I wasn't really getting into her head...and then at other times she seemed to have an emotional reaction that wasn't justified by events---for instance, her feelings of betrayal when a guy who was hired to kill her runs off without killing her. (The situation *was* a little more complicated than that makes it sound.)

I did enjoy some parts. The Kasabaarde part was good, and there's a powerful scene toward the end when the head of the conspiracy is revealed...though it would have been more interesting if Christie had tried to engage with the bad guy's arguments. I'm focusing on the negative here because on the balance, I can't recommend the book.

I'm kind of disappointed I didn't like it better, because some of Gentle's other work sounds really intriguing, and I'm not sure I want to take the chance and see if she improved.

It's been too many years since I've read Golden Witchbreed and Ancient Light, but they came up in conversation somewhere and I had to look them up -- and I was surprised to see how little information there is on them, especially the latter. Please see the other reviews for better info about the books than I could provide . I will add images of the covers, however (although I don't like the cover of Ancient Light), and the comment that usually I don't like books that have a sad or tragic nature, but in this case I make an exception.