AI.THROOP@UTEXAS-20.ARPA (07/24/85)
From: David Throop <AI.THROOP@UTEXAS-20.ARPA> This is a fairly good book - thoughtful, richly colored. Its premise is of an alien near-human culture - the Grievers. They live in a placid world, only one culture, no war or conflict or (to mention) violent crime. And the culture is grief centered: its art, music, lines of royal succession, manners, are all tied back to grief. It seems similar to ancestor worship, but grieving for the death of those lost. The plot evolves that a ship of Earth anthropologist have come to study the culture, and one falls in love with the Queen's Own Griever, a beauty named the Gray Wanderer. The conflict, such as there is, in the book proceeds from this love and from the clash of the old traditions against the new ways that the Terran ship has accidently introduced to the culture. The best part of the book is her painting of a culture that is near enough to our own to be comprehensible, but alien enough to be baffling. And she explores grief itself, asking and answering "What is grief, why is it so sweet in its way?" But the characters themselves stay enigmatic. Since the format for the book is the transcripts of interviews with the central characters, there is no good action, and only a little bit of rich description at the end. The world Jane Yoden sketches is an intriguing one, yet I was left hungry for more at the end of the book. -------