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Oct. 27th, 2004
Lunar Eclipse
Oct. 27th, 2004 05:59 pmDamn. The eclipse is just a few hours away, and the sky is wall-to-wall clouds.
Oh, well. The next one is only three years off.
Oh, well. The next one is only three years off.
"Earth Made of Glass"
Oct. 27th, 2004 08:58 pmThis review is tough to write. Most of the things that I want to say involve details that people who haven't read the book might not want to know. I'd like this to be of some use to those people too, though. So, I'll say some general things - enough, perhaps, to give the flavor of the book - and put the spoilers under a cut.
Earth Made of Glass takes place about nine years after the end of A Million Open Doors. Throughout that time, Giraut Leones and his Caledonian-born wife Margaret have been working as agents of the Council of Humanity, helping to ease the transition of once-isolated colonies to full-fledged, springer-based participation in the galactic civilization. Their new assignment is to the planet Briand, which is home to two cultures. Neither culture is, so to speak, natural; each began as a reconstruction of a culture known only through archaeological research. One is based on the Tamil-speaking Cankam culture, which flourished in southern India between the first and fourth centuries AD; the poetry of that era, and criticism of that poetry, are the heart of Briand's Tamil Mandalam culture. The other, called Kintulum, is based on the Maya of the Classical era - roughly contemporary, as it happens, with the Cankam culture. It was not intended for the two cultures to be in contact - very little of Briand's surface is habitable, and they were assigned widely separated areas - but an unexpected natural disaster forced them into proximity. Ethnic hostility has simmered for some four hundred years, and the usual practices of the Council, which are quite disruptive, have been forgone, for fear of triggering full-scale conflict. The arrival of Giraut and Margaret prompts a liberal faction among the Maya to make a bid to establish a bridge between the two cultures and, ultimately, between both and the larger culture. The risk is great, if the effort fails, but it has to be made; there is little the two diplomats can do except observe, and perhaps nudge matters in a favorable direction. Matters develop with a terrible fatality to an excruciating climax.
And now the ( spoilers. )
Earth Made of Glass takes place about nine years after the end of A Million Open Doors. Throughout that time, Giraut Leones and his Caledonian-born wife Margaret have been working as agents of the Council of Humanity, helping to ease the transition of once-isolated colonies to full-fledged, springer-based participation in the galactic civilization. Their new assignment is to the planet Briand, which is home to two cultures. Neither culture is, so to speak, natural; each began as a reconstruction of a culture known only through archaeological research. One is based on the Tamil-speaking Cankam culture, which flourished in southern India between the first and fourth centuries AD; the poetry of that era, and criticism of that poetry, are the heart of Briand's Tamil Mandalam culture. The other, called Kintulum, is based on the Maya of the Classical era - roughly contemporary, as it happens, with the Cankam culture. It was not intended for the two cultures to be in contact - very little of Briand's surface is habitable, and they were assigned widely separated areas - but an unexpected natural disaster forced them into proximity. Ethnic hostility has simmered for some four hundred years, and the usual practices of the Council, which are quite disruptive, have been forgone, for fear of triggering full-scale conflict. The arrival of Giraut and Margaret prompts a liberal faction among the Maya to make a bid to establish a bridge between the two cultures and, ultimately, between both and the larger culture. The risk is great, if the effort fails, but it has to be made; there is little the two diplomats can do except observe, and perhaps nudge matters in a favorable direction. Matters develop with a terrible fatality to an excruciating climax.
And now the ( spoilers. )
