Ring of Swords

by Eleanor Arnason

Book Overview

In the tradition of The Handmaid's Tale, Tiptree Award-winning fantasy author Eleanor Arnason offers a new novel that explores gender roles using science fiction. Earth is on the brink of total war... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312855184
• ISBN13: 9780312855185
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 382 Pages
• Weight: 0.97 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

The Hwarath are real, right?

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.

Thought-provoking

A fascinating look at an alien culture, and human responses to it. Of course, to the Hwarhath, *we* are the aliens. This book is incredibly suspenseful as human and alien negotiators try to find a way to coexist without their species exterminating each other.I found the actions of one of the human characters quite puzzling. He ends up working for the aliens (and more than that), after they... let's say they were as nasty as possible. And he is quite sincere about changing sides. Does this really happen? Plus, he seems to "change" in another way, which is even more fundamental (this sounds cryptic, but I don't want to give spoilers). Don't know if that's possible either. I agree with the reaction of Anna (another character) to the idea of getting together with someone who helped... well, read the book and see.Also, the human negotiators were represented as part of a small minority who wanted to get off the (severely congested) Earth to "explore strange new worlds". Given that, and the future setting with FTL travel, these people seemed far too xeno- and homophobic.Not yer average space opera -- well worth reading and thinking about. P.S.: There might be *two* non-human intelligent species here...

Thoughtful, provocative anthropological science finction

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.

Sci-fi meets culture study

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