On the planet Scythia, plants give birth to insects and trees can drag you to your death. Artificial monsters stalk the desert, and alien basket-men have wandered into town. John Maraintha has been abandoned here, light-years from the peaceful forests that he loves. The desert is harsh and the people in thrall to a barbaric custom called marriage. He must find some way to make a life here. But on Scythia, survival means transformation—and not everyone is willing to change
Joyful ... Ambitious ... Devoted to cognitive estrangement, making new worlds whose structures and societies let us see ours with fresh eyes ... A cracking, fast-moving adventure story, with a wilderness-survival plot, love stories, coming-out stories, and a whodunnit ... Reed hasn’t just written a novel about social change and family life, queerness and faith. She’s embedded those ideas into a larger arc about settler-colonial systems.
Reed uses sf as a jumping-off point to examine the interesting and often contradictory way humans see belief, sex, and gender, all while challenging their characters to embrace change both in themselves and in the others around them. A well-built novel for people fascinated in the possible ecologies, linguistics, and societies of other planets and futuristic worlds.
A beautifully written and highly imaginative exploration of culture clash, queer identity, and adaptation. It asks who is willing to transform to meet new circumstances, and how much.
