Customer Reviews

The Slave and The Free: Books 1 and 2 of 'The Holdfast Chronicles': 'Walk to the End of the World' and 'Motherlines'

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

 

 

This volume is a reprint of the first two novels of Charnas's Holdfast series, *Walk to the End of the World* and *Motherlines*. Together, these two novels were awarded a Retrospective Tiptree Award in 1996 and at last they are back in print.

Charnas writes in a spare, calm style that sets off the strangeness of the plot and setting to great effect. All of the Holdfast books (the series is now complete after four volumes) take place in an indeterminately distant future after the world ecosystem has collapsed and nearly all humans have died, along with most large species of animals. The residents of the Holdfast are descendants of the lucky few who were able to hide out underground in secret government shelters and who emerged after "the Wasting" to found a new society. The men of the Holdfast think they know what caused the collapse of civilization: the influence of women. Now known as 'fems', women are drudges and breeders and are beaten or killed for the flimsiest of reasons or no reason at all.

The first book recounts the journey of three men and a fem to find the father of one of the men. The plot twists are completely unpredictable and harrowing. It left me shaken, but giddy with all that the author had attempted and succeeded at. The second book follows the fem out into the wilderness beyond the Holdfast, where she discovers an undreamt of society of women who breed horses and reproduce without need of men. She also discovers a group of escaped fems like herself. And all is not sweetness and light. These are wonderful books that address power relationships with a psychological realism and depth of thought that I haven't often seen. And they are founding texts of feminist sf.

This is another of those seredipitous finds in the unsavory neighborhood's secondhand bookshops. Charnas, the writer, goes into meticulous detail on the characters, daily life, food, clothing, and problems of an earth after the great "Wasting", when the Ancients destroyed and polluted our planet, save in certain small strongholds, such as Holdfast. In the environs of Holdfast, girls and boys are raised separately, as kits and cubs. The cubs are brought up in the Boyhouse, not knowing mother or father, since the threat to the older men is that the younger men will rise up and try to cease power from their fathers. The girls are bred in kitpits, fighting for the measly portions of seaweed-derived food, and prepared to be slaves to the men. They speak their own "femspeech", soft and slurred and always deferring to the men, with such phrases as "please-you-master" thrown in at the end of all sentences and strict avoidance of the word "I". Our heroine Alldera manages to escape to the forbidden wild hinterlands, and stumbles about pregnant through uninhabited valleys and forests, until discovered by a band of women called the Riders, who live from their horses and grains. There she is rescued, gives birth to a girl, and becomes a rider herself, until conflicts arise in her loyalties. She ventures off to find the 'Free Fems", those slaves who escaped and who live banded together elsewhere in the hinterlands. She finds herself ill at ease there, too, and not accepted for her detached discomfort.

More I will not tell, but for a reader like me, who at heart knows we are all lonely souls passing through the universe, there is something addictively seductive in a story of a loner who flees from one trap of slavery to the next, thinking and analyzing as she goes, trying to decide what she really wants. Many good scifi books are in this vein of an explorer of strange civilizations not understanding how to find his/her own "happiness", how to fit in.

What makes it all more pertinent to us now in 2001 is that the book was written 25 years ago, at the height of the women's movement in the USA, and reeks of an antipathy towards men because of their power over women. Since another generation has been born since then without that chip on their shoulder (theoreti8cally!!!), it's almost historic to read this now. You can think later, how far have women come, really? Are things different than then? I think so, but that's another subject.

Excellent story, with only one caveat - odd names and many of them make the plot sometimes hard to follow. The author also has the traditional mindset to let the reader know if a woman is "goodlooking" or not, regardless if it's relevant to the story.

Amazing how the beauty question will never be laid to rest. Women will always have it tough in this regard, as aging Michael Douglas can lure young actresses to bed, wed them and breed 'em.

For people who say these books are too violent, too male hating or feminist you're really not picking up what these books are about.

That's not the premise for the story, it's the background. What the book is about are the characters that struggle in this world, struggle with the rules society has given them on how to deal with each other - struggle with how to change it and learning how to forgive, or at least give others a chance to forgive. You need to continue the series all the way through to get that full affect.

But you can't just skim through this book and get that full affect, at first glance is seems that Charnas is creating a world where men are slaveholders and evil, and women are strong and good.

Charnas is very subtle in her writing though, probably most people aren't picking up how she shows her characters fighting their boundaries (men and women, or "fems") and how they are fighting to define what's right and what's wrong.

She portrayed many men as strong, good guy characters, and many women as weak and vindictive. She favors neither men or women here.

She chose slavery as a setting, and worked her way through to a world that was free for everyone. Read the next couple and see. ;)

I recommend this book 100%. It's one of my favourites of all time.

These books are considered by many to be classics in feminist science fiction, but are so different from each other that I will review them separately. I suppose I'm in an odd minority in that I disliked one and liked the other.

"Walk to the End of the World" fails for a variety of reasons, the most important of which can be traced to its radical feminist ideology. While the anger inherent in this ideology is understandable considering the abuses to which women have been subjected throughout human history, by itself it makes for poor literature, as is true with most radical ideologies.

Most of "Walk to the End of the World" is told from a male perspective, but because it is first and foremost a misandryist ideological tract, Charnas forces her male characters into simplistic clichés of what radical feminism believes men to be: violent, hierarchical, and dysfunctional. The ecological disaster of the "Wasting", which sets up Charnas' nightmarish future, was solely the fault of men (specifically white men, of course), as is pretty much every other bad thing that happens in the book. Men fail at everything in the Holdfast, even homosexual love, and most of the time they blame women for these failures. This unrealistic view of men cripples "Walk to the End of the World" by making the male characters one-dimensional and uninteresting. They exist only to oppress the "fems", and the book seems to take an almost perverse pleasure in bringing some new and pointless male atrocity to light in almost every chapter. Instead of exploring the fascinating potential it has for father-son conflict or male friendship with other males, "Walk to the End of the World" dwells obsessively on showing men to be cruel, superstitious, and stupid. In addition, the book presents women solely as eternal victims of men, smarter and more moral because of the oppression they suffer. The only character who is at all interesting is Alldera, whose perspective we only see near the end of the book.

The result is a book which cannot be taken seriously, and which brings to mind John Norman's controversial Gor novels (though from a purely technical standpoint Charnas is a far better writer than Norman), only here the failing is misandry where for Norman it is misogyny. In both cases the extreme oversimplification of gender roles and relations cripples the stories' efforts, and we learn nothing from them; at best we might be entertained. If you want a book that seethes with unproductive rage, "Walk to the End of the World" is just the thing; if you want a terrifying look at misogyny run amuck, I'd suggest Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" instead.

In "Motherlines", however, Charnas shows us that despite the failings of the first Holdfast book, she is quite capable of writing interesting, engaging fiction. Because there are no male characters in "Motherlines", the main failings of "Walk to the End of the World" are for the most part avoided; even the misandry in "Motherlines" works because we are in the point of view of women who have either been mistreated by men or who simply have no experience with them. The tension and conflict between the "free fems" and the "Motherline tribes" is nicely handled, and nowhere in the book do we sense an ideological underpinning. Unlike the men of "Walk to the End of the World", the women of "Motherlines" are richly diverse in their behavior and display a full range of human emotions, good and bad. The description of life in a nomadic, horse-based society flows with realism (provided one gets past the rather icky mating process used by the Motherline tribes) and shows a deep familiarity with its subject matter.

Best of all, "Motherlines" is a character based book, which is unusual in science fiction. We get to know these women as they each grow as people, and unlike most science fiction writers, Charnas does not bury us in unnecessary detail by explaining exactly why things in her world work the way they do. Instead we get a story of people; they happen to be women, but that's not so important. What's important is that they are interesting. It is to Charnas' credit that her female-only world is not presented as a paradise, which given the hostility to men in "Walk to the End of the World" would have been the politically correct thing for a radical feminist to do (and here I was pleasantly surprised to find my expectations in this regard to be wrong). Instead we get a story that presents women as fully-fleshed characters, which is a rarity in science fiction.

In sum, one star for "Walk to the End of the World" and four stars for "Motherlines".

This book has some major issues in the depth of thought given by the author. I'm a bit of a nitpicker, but this book seems to have been written on the fly without any thought given to it. I know that it's purpose was apparently to show an extreme distopia, but the author seems to focus too much on making things bad without considering anything but the most surface level implications. Some minor examples that I don't feel gives too much away, since they're all early in the book:

Fighters drugged to the point of being as sentient as animals, yet following all orders perfectly and fighting as well as people with sharp senses (the drug is pot by the way, making this all the more impressive).

All animals in the world are dead, and basically no records seem to remain of the old world, and yet one of the characters constantly visualizes people as animals he'd never have seen.

People who are so nutrient starved that they cannibalize their own dead freely give strangers a large supply of food they shouldn't have even had access to, let alone have reserves of.

These are just surface level issues, but it show's the amount of thought given to the material by the author. There are worse violations, but these hopefully give nothing away.

From page one I found this book fascinating. The idea of a future where men and women have absolutely no use for one another...unless to subjugate and procreate. Very thought provoking.

Sometimes targeted fiction goes totally awry -- as in this case. Charnas' book is ostensively feminist science fiction but the most peculiar thing happens... you end up hoping to read about the guys. The book starts out detailing the interaction of gay male dominants and female slaves ("fems") and breeding farms. (i.e. the guys think sex with women is a chore.) The male society is vivid, well structured and well told. Men are wicked wicked wicked in this world, they only have a heart for each other and are brutal exploiters of women's breeding abilities. The best subplot, "femspeak", where women speak in soft, slurred tones that the brutal wicked men won't understand, is barely developed.

Except as a historical journey back to 1971 feminism, I'd skip these books, the writing is hostile, fuzzy, and reveals weird preferences on the part of the author. I mean... if you hate the dang guys so much, how come they are so much more interesting than this society of women that you are writing about? Sheesh.

I'd recommend The Gate to Women's Country if you are longing for a livable, feminist utopia or dystopia (depending on where you are coming from).

End phallocracy, sisters. Just not with this book.