Genre: Science Fiction
Description:
A small, isolated community – in some ways
idyllic, in others quite the opposite – discovers things about itself which it
has suppressed for millennia. The exciting story concerns what they do about
what they find out.
Mention of ‘the Shoah’ early in the book
gives a good clue that this society is rooted in a fictionalised, ancient
Judaism. Other Middle Eastern elements are in the mix, as is a bit of Ancient
Greece. There is also mention of African and Aboriginal music. But the
Sanhedrin controls Areta, under the aegis of Their Wisdoms, the Iskandars.
The book has echoes of work like Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur
C Clarke, and Persephone by Kevin J Anderson & Jeffrey Morris (which
I reviewed for Big Al and Pals in 2025).
Author:
Daniel Rirdan has returned to speculative, world-building,
fiction in his fifties and this year is releasing two books he has been working
on for a decade. The first, Republic
of Forge and Grace (325pp) was released in January. This one will be
available from 28 April. (It is always nice to be favoured with pre-release
material.) Already he is deep into the writing of more novels.
Rirdan’s life has taken him from Israel to
the south west USA via Australia, and military service (among other life
events). From hand-writing novels as a teenager (and publishing several) he has
returned to his early love of writing.
Appraisal:
This is a big book, in length and in ideas. There
is much to enjoy here. The plotting is complex and braids satisfactorily
together, to increase intrigue and pace as matters develop.
The book is long. That is partly because of
those several, braided, plots which are introduced sequentially.
The reader is shown a small, agrarian,
society in detail. It is a refreshing change from our own hurry-scurry world.
The ruling council takes care to keep the world in balance, putting back as
much as is taken out: pollution appears unknown. The population is not
permitted to fluctuate: 50,000 souls only inhabit Areta. It has been so for
millennia. This is Areta before Stuff happens.
The characters are a logical product of
their formal society and culture. Innovation and spontaneity are punished.
Flouting the rules is punished. Because of this it took almost half the book
for this reader to warm to the main characters. Indeed, even during the
denouement, when I understood why certain important characters had behaved in
what I felt was a truly reprehensible way, I could not warm to them. An element
of this is, of course, not unusual in fiction. But perhaps finding so few of
the major players agreeable as companions on one’s reading journey is.
There is some repetition, and (later on) explanations
of things the reader maybe doesn’t need to know in the level of detail
provided. The first 20% of the book is, frankly, slow. Its purpose appears to
be twofold: to get the two primary characters to meet, and to show how
hidebound their society is. There is a quantity of coy flirting and inevitable
misunderstandings before the primary relationship stabilises. Thereafter the
book begins to take off.
One thing I found disquieting has happened
to the society on Areta. Relationships and breeding have become divorced. The
catalyst for this appears to have been ‘The Shoah’, when unspeakable cruelties
were visited upon women by men. The solution (as you will quickly discover) is
that the society has bred for giantesses who undergo martial arts training from
a young age and now completely control sex. The way the men still think about
these, now enormous, voluptuous women makes it clear why matters needed to change.
But the solution, of having such women roaming the streets after dark and
taking their pleasure from men, doesn’t seem (to this reader) to have solved
the problem. There is nothing in the plot which seems to require this. As a
result, a lot of people’s soft-porn fantasies may be gratified within the pages
of this book. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing I leave to other
readers to decide.
The reader learns what various bastardised
and misunderstood rituals and festivals practiced by the society may actually
mean at the same time as these realisations occur to the characters.
Discoveries are made which I wouldn’t dream of giving away here. But they add
up to a fascinating discovery. And a terrible problem in the offing. The bulk
of this 450pp or so book is taken up with solving this problem – and when the
denouement finally approaches, the pages do just turn themselves. This is
a clever book.
Buy now
from: Amazon US Amazon UK
Format/Typo
Issues:
Review is based on an advance reviewer copy,
so we can’t gauge the final product.
Rating: ****
Four Stars
Reviewed
by: Judi Moore
Approximate word count: 110-115,000 words
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