No Maverick

Book Review: "The Child Goddess"

The Child Goddess by Louise Marley

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I was predisposed to hate this book. Both the title and the cover screamed "Preachy New Age." I'm so glad I'm in a reading group, and we chose it, for this is one great read.

The story and characters are much better than the background. This is science fiction without the science. The most important hydrogen refueling planet is an earth type water world, with active volcanoes and no moon. Why extracting hydrogen from water is cheaper than skimming gas giants is never explained, or how a moonless world stays habitable (the Carbon Cycle should be broken and all oxygen should get locked up). And how you would have star-flight and still have humans, un-enhanced, very mortal, with our same life expectancy.

The story, however, blew me away. A child is found on the refueling world, and returned to Earth against her will. The protagonist is a woman Catholic priest (why the cover art didn't include a collar is beyond me) and anthropologist sent to be her guardian. The company that owns the refueling operation wants the child for something else, something medical, and isn't sharing that information with the protagonist. Very early in the story you get mystery, tension, and powerful emotion.

One relationship did bother me. That of the corporate CEO and one if its doctors. The doctor seemed outclassed by the rest of the main characters, I never did figure out why he was allowed to stay on the job when the CEO should have had better talent at her beck and call.

However, each mystery that is resolved leads to a further and more profound one. By the time the book is wrapping up, the reader has followed these characters though many intense changes.

I recommend this book to all but the most hard-core, hard-science fiction readers.  


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A Week in the Campaign -- History up Close

I survived my first week working (volunteering) with the Obama campaign. I'm working at the Oregon City office, you can find me there every afternoon. Well, not today, as I'm at the beach, but most afternoons. 

One day a new volunteer came in. Tall, older guy (70), wearing a black leather biker vest and a leather bandana over his head. We shook hands and I explained how to work the phones.

"This is the first campaign I've worked on in a long time," he said.

"How long," I asked.

"Since John F. Kennedy's campaign."

It sent shivers down my spine. History is happening here, and we are part of it.

I <3 Sarah Palin

What's not to love?

• She's so anti-choice, she wants abortion criminalized in cases of rape and incest.
• She wants Creationism taught in science classes.
• She supported Pat Buchanan in 2000.
• She is a climate change denier.
• She's been governor for one and half years, and has zero national or international experience.
• She would be next in line to deal with Putin and the rest of the world behind an ailing and aged John McCain.

On the other hand, she would be a good model for Lenscrafters, should the whole right wing VP thing not work out.

The Campaign for Change

Monday at noon I start working (volunteering) for the Barak Obama's Campaign for Change in Oregon City. I don't know what took me so long, but after donating about as much as I could, it was time to do some work for the campaign.

Last night Alison and I went to a great MoveOn "Yes We Can Party" party at a neighbor's here in Lake Oswego. We watched the best speech in my lifetime (and I'm 52) as Barak accepted the nomination. The only questionable moment was when I tried a cherry flavored beer....

It was great to be clapping, cheering, and tearing up in a party of people eating hot dogs and doing the same. The entire convention has been inspiring, and it was great sharing the culimation with my neighbors. As we left, I kept saying, "It's up to us now."

So I went to BarakObama.com and signed up last night. Monday can't come too soon.

John Marvin for President?

My stealth campaign.

Forest Mage

I first met Robin Hobb at the Tacoma's Writer's Convention in 2004. She sat at our table, and I was a total dolt. I hadn't read her yet, so was a bit tongue tied. I asked her about breaking into writing, and she suggested getting a few short stories published before trying to sell a novel. Good advice, taken badly:

"I don't like short stories." I told her. "I don't read them, I don't want to read them, I wish they would just go away. My ideas can't fit into a short story."

I am such an idiot. And now, when I'm not writing short stories, I'm often reading Robin Hobb.

Forest Mage by Robin Hobb

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
This sequel to Shaman's Crossing was a bit of a let down. I don't mind when a book takes its own good time, but this was glacial.

Many authors will use narrative time to skip ahead, but Robin Hobb teased the reader with lines like "It was twenty days before..." and you think you are about to skip twenty days. But no. "On the first day..." "The second day..." and so on.

If you use Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey model, this book, and the first, find the protagonist stuck in the Refusal of the Call for two, thick, slow, books.

On the other hand, the details were great, the characters felt real, and the magic was new, different, and magical. And the book is about something. The tension between nature and civilization. Between two conflicting rules of conduct. Yes, even good and evil, and the big grey/green area in between.

If you have time, and you enjoyed the first book, I'd say keep going. If you want to see her at her best, try the Tawny Man trilogy, starting with Fool's Errand.

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