Review: Great sci-fi story from Nestvold.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 25, 2012
"'Looking Through Lace" 'is the story of Toni, a xenolinguist who is assigned to work with a first contact team. She's been relegated to doing grunt work until now, and is really excited for the opportunity to prove herself.The alien world in '"Looking Through Lace" 'is fascinating - although the inhabitants are descended from humans, they have a unique history and culture. The women speak an entirely different language among themselves that the men are not allowed to learn, and Toni is determined to figure out how and why that happened. However, she has a jealous senior colleague and the affections of an attractive native (who just happens to be in a group marriage) to contend with.I enjoyed reading a science-fiction story by Nestvold; all the other work I've read by her has been fantasy. She keeps up the excellent worldbuilding and characters. I found the revelations concerning the history of the world very interesting. The antagonist xenolinguist seemed like a bit of a caricature, but the interesting alien world more than made up for it.