Review: Happy Reader
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 9, 2014
New Sion has a protagonist who lives in a male-centered world. It is akin to Victorian Britain or a frontier town in early America. Men own land, houses, have jobs and earn money. Women keep the house, do what they’re told and have (lots of) babies. To fit into this world after tragedy, New Sion’s protagonist hides her feminine identity and changes her name to “Finn”.There is a real wild west flavour to this novel. There are bounty hunters, small isolated towns andalluded insular village folk, often farmers. There is also a tendency towards lawlessness (creating a market for the bounty hunters) and this lawlessness results in much abuse of women. Women’s only real valid form of employment is prostitution but many men still take what they can where they can and repeatedly rape women. Thankfully, this act isn’t gone into detail in any of this novel – only alluded to or stated. This is not a novel for the strictly feminist. I found myself wincing at many parts at the injustice of the laws.The science-fiction element is that this world is only one world in the many populated in this area. An alien ship crash lands and makes a connection with our protagonist and her love interest. They work together to free the family Finn has left and try to restore order in the most gang-controlled areas of the planet. There are also many weird and wonderful creatures to meet along the way in this strange world’s ecosystem.The romance element of this novel is ignorable or flick-past-able for the uninterested. However, it is interesting in how it is portrayed as Finn’s love interest must overcome her outwardly male appearance to fall in love.These elements add together to make a rather scintillating story but this story is slightly marred by some overly formal dialogue. For example: ‘Then if you’ll excuse me, ma’am, I carry a little with me, for medicinal purposes. I’ll go fetch it.’ and ‘I’m just upset, and we really don’t have any liquor.’. People simply don’t speak like this. They use contractions, miss out words and would avoid technical phrases like ‘medicinal purposes’. This stiltedness to the dialogue on occasion slows the novel as a whole and dents the believability of the characters and setting alike.However, I enjoyed New Sion despite not being a huge fan of otherworldly adventures. It captured my attention and subverted chauvinist behaviour in such a way that I could be satisfied by the ending that all was, once again, right in at least the protagonist’s world (especially as there was a new happy couple to coo over).originally posted at long and short reviews