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Published on: 6/1/2009
Last Visited: 7/6/2009
Author: Liz Williams
Publisher: Tor UK
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One of the most interesting of these is Liz Williams and with Winterstrike we find her - as the Guardian would have it - at her most "beautifully written, seamlessly plotted and profound.
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The story is intriguing, the characters engaging, and at the same time Williams' evokes some very interesting issues.
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However, where this was a story founded around an ideal utopian social order, free of war, conflict and domination, where it was a polemic which lampooned the male gender and diametrically opposed the social potentials of masculinity and femininity, Williams has created a Martian society in Winterstrike which, despite its more advanced technology, is really no better than anything we experience today.
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Despite this, their behaviour and reaction to events is virtually identical, and this issue isn't helped by Williams' writing.
While it can't be denied that she has an exceptional talent for creating quite beautiful, lyrical prose, events are related by Hestia and Essegui in the first person, and there's nothing linguistically to distinguish between them.
As such it takes a great deal of attention to determine who is where and when and doing what and why, and often we're forced to rely on the chapter headings.
Indeed, the most intriguing character - Leretui/Shorn - is conveyed in the third person, and is the more interesting not only because she has a clear character arc, but because she emerges much more convincingly as an individual.
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