8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Top-notch fantasy writing, February 20, 2003
This review is from: The World Celaeno Chose (Paperback)
Fletcher's prose is clean and precise. She can evoke a lively alternate world resembling medieval Western Europe, with something like an ethnologist's density of observation. She favors appealing female heroes, and stages their adventures in a freshly depicted, atmospheric setting, its fauna and flora, villages and farms rendered with admirable economy. She has an unerring sense in conveying the reality of a scene: small, inconspicuous details from ordinary life, almost peripherally noted, anchor the fantasy proper. This is "speculative" fiction--we are invited to reflect on the constraints (particularly when gender-based) under which societies function. But the rhythms and quiet pleasures of everyday life are never subordinated to the thought-experiment that fuels important aspects of the story.
Read also Fletcher's "Lorimal's Chalice" (which seems not to have been noticed by Amazon.com!), and check out her website for unpublished stories. They're all a delight to read. These are chaste narratives, but the principal characters are women who love women.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Celaeno is Out of This World!, November 9, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: The World Celaeno Chose (Paperback)
I loved this book. It has romance, adventure, and a critique on the construction of history, all rolled into one.
Set on a planet inhabited only by women and dominated by a ruthless religious elite, the mystery is... how did it come to be like this?... And could there ever be the hope of something better?
The race to escape oppression and find the truth makes for riveting reading.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rich, Glorious Prose, and a Spell-Binding World & Characters, December 1, 2004
This review is from: The World Celaeno Chose (Paperback)
In the Temple in the city of Fairfield, a young woman named Lynn does the important work of helping women reproduce. She is a sort of psychic DNA-knitting doctor/priest called an imprinter. Imprinters are chosen very young for their psychic abilities and are taken from the families to serve Celaeno, the great goddess of the people. Everything about Lynn's world is focused on prayer, imprinting, and the teachings of Celaeno. The imprinting skill she shares brings in a fortune in "offerings" (required by the Church) from eager women desperate for children.. There is no separation of Church and State; they are one and the same.
After a couple of decades of this mind-numbing, psychologically draining work, the book opens with Lynn in a state of depression. Once a month during a religious ritual on the steps of the Temple, she sees the outdoors. Otherwise, she is locked into the tomb-like environment of the Temple, never to have a lover, never to have freedom, never to know anything but this life of service. She is basically held captive, a prisoner of her own abilities-until the day Sister Smith, from the larger Temple in Landfall, appears and wrangles with the authorities to take the talented imprinter far away to the larger, more powerful Temple. Lynn is excited to make the long journey during which, perhaps for the last time, she can enjoy the forests, the freedom to walk on the woodland paths and see the moon, and the cool air at night.
A squadron of Rangers, including Lt. Kimberly Ramon, is quickly assigned to escort the Sisters and Lynn on the long journey over the mountains and to the south. And this is where the adventure begins. For the first time since childhood, Lynn is among real and interesting women, and she is quite taken with Ramon, who has her own secrets and griefs. "As much as anything, Lynn enjoyed the honest, open banter, although the jokes were frequently bawdy. To Lynn's mind they were fair less offensive than the conversation of the sisters; the intimidation by pious quotes, the political backstabbing disguised in religious platitudes. The soldiers spoke of a world Lynn would never know, but it didn't matter. Their stories were like breathing fresh air after years of choking in incense" (p. 90).
The soldiers are also brave, and when they are attacked on the journey, everything about the trip changes. Lynn's ability to envision herself as a free woman begins to grow. But can she shake free of the grip of the Church? How far will the powers-that-be go in order to keep her to themselves?
This fundamentalist society, operating based upon bits and pieces of lore, abridged history, inaccurate facts, and misguided good intentions, is all the more frightening because it is peopled only by women. In Fletcher's world of Celaeno, it's not men with the compulsion to render matters of life into simplistic and often bone-crushing black and white; women can be and are just as dangerous.
With rich, glorious prose, Jane Fletcher has created a spell-binding world and a variety of fascinating and multi-dimensional characters. The world is so compelling that I couldn't help but wish I could quite literally go there! Lynn's quest, as well as that of Kim Ramon, makes for exciting reading. At its heart, the book is an adventure/quest, but it is also a mystery. Who are these people? Where did they come from? What happened to the men, if, indeed, there ever were any? The back story of the previous 533 years is unraveled slowly, but surely, for the reader so that by the end of the book, all is revealed.
THE WORLD CELAENO CHOSE is absorbing and engrossing tale-telling of the highest order, and the really exciting thing is that although this novel is complete and "finished," the door is left open to explore more of this world, which the author has apparently done in subsequent books. I can't wait to read the next Celaeno volumes, and this book is a keeper that I will re-read again and again. I highly recommend it.
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