Ring of Swords [Paperback]

Eleanor Arnason (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 1994

For half a century, Earth has been on the brink of total war with an implacable alien race. Biologist Anna Perez is the first to discover the truth-the hwarhath have segregated their society strictly along gender lines, to prevent the warlike males from harming women and children. In their eyes, humans are a dishonorable and barbaric race who may require extermination...

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Immensely satisfying....I will not be a bit surprised to see Ring of Swords on the next round of award ballots." -Tom Easton, Analog

"A remarkably suspenseful book....I plan to devour [Arnason's next book] with the same delight and intellectual relish that I found in this one." -Russell Letson, Locus

"At last, a non-predictable, thought-through, can't-stop-reading-it story, full of complicated and irresistible people, some of them human....Enjoy! Enjoy!" -Ursula K. Le Guin

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Orb Books; 1st Orb ed edition (November 15, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312890168
• ISBN-13: 978-0312890162
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,908,375 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful, provocative anthropological science finction, July 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Ring of Swords (Paperback)

This book is stunningly good. Building on her thoughtful earlier work, _Woman of the Iron People_ Arnason produces a novel which has a truly vivid voice, full of complex, perplexing characters, and a context where categories extend beyond some forumulaic good/bad. If you like Russell's work, _The Sparrow_, I'd expect you to like this. Arnason deals with real issues, but also has a sense of humor. I've now re-read this book upward of 10 times (the first two back to back, starting again as soon as I finished). Book images-- Arnason's alien re-thinking of Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, and MacBeth-- keep popping up in my mind. And I would really like to hear more of Anna and Nicholas's voices, telling about the various ways people understand intelligence, language, and the somewhat to extremely alien. This book is not simplistic. But if you are willing to think--and enjoy wonderfully cutting prose--it's a joy to read.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sci-fi meets culture study, August 7, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Ring of Swords (Paperback)

Wow, is about all i have to say for this book, and maybe thank god i came across this in the bookstore! Ring of Swords is a wonderfully written book with characters that beg to be written into a sequel. The book revolves around the story of a culture clash between Humanity and a species called the Hwarhath, who's culture is extremely gender segregated. The Hwarhath find humanity utterly contemptable and possibly deserving of extermination. Within the pages of this book you will uncover a mindblowing study of the our culture seen through the eyes of aliens (and humans as well), and hopefully come away with a understanding of how cultures can have a hard time encountering cultures completely different from themselves. In Ring of Swords (if you read carefully) you will see us in them, a hard thing to do, but tackled wonderfully by Eleanor Arnason. Get this book! I can't wait for the sequel

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Hwarath are real, right?, March 21, 2004

By 

cammykitty "cammykitty" (Minneapolis, MN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ring of Swords (Paperback)

This book became a page turner for me, yes because of the plot, but mostly because of her aliens and her characters. I fell in love with many of the characters in the book. I understood what made them tick. They were real. But the biggest treat was her aliens. First the Psuedosiphorones, a thought provoking sort of jelly fish. But the book isn't about jelly fish. It's about us. Arnason uses her aliens, the Hwarath, as a way of holding up a distorting mirror to our own culture.

But, it is also about the Hwarath, a culture where the women stay home and have babies (oh? Really? Are you sure that's all they do?) and the men are off looking for an enemy. They badly want to find an enemy and when they find humans, yipee!!! Except, humans don't understand the rules of war. I have never read a book where an alien culture is so carefully drawn that you start thinking you are reading something that involved anthropological research, not dry research, but research. Wait a minute, these guys don't exist.

By the time you finish reading Ring of Swords, you will know what the Hwarath consider ethical and honorable, who really calls the shots, what is sexy, what is going on that Hwarath hide from other Hwarath, what they think is exceptable human chow, what their music sounds like (ouch), a touch of their mythology, what they wear when they aren't trying to impress humans and what their theater is like. Especially their theater! I know more about the Hwarath now than I know about Canadians, and I live in Minnesota and have Canadian cousins. And Canadians really do exist.

And by the way, the plot of Ring of Swords is pretty cool too.