Glory Season

( 8 )

Overview

Hugo and Nebula award-winning author David Brin is one of the most eloquent, imaginative voices in science fiction.  Now he returns with a new novel rich in texture, universal in theme, monumental in scope--pushing the genre to new heights.

Young Maia is fast approaching a turning point in her life.  As a half-caste var, she must leave the clan home of her privileged half sisters and seek her fortune in the world.  With her twin sister, Leie, she ...

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Glory Season

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More About This Book

Overview

Hugo and Nebula award-winning author David Brin is one of the most eloquent, imaginative voices in science fiction.  Now he returns with a new novel rich in texture, universal in theme, monumental in scope--pushing the genre to new heights.

Young Maia is fast approaching a turning point in her life.  As a half-caste var, she must leave the clan home of her privileged half sisters and seek her fortune in the world.  With her twin sister, Leie, she searches the docks of Port Sanger for an apprenticeship aboard the vessels that sail the trade routes of the Stratoin oceans.

On her far-reaching, perilous journey of discovery, Maia will endure hardship and hunger, imprisonment and loneliness, bloody battles with pirates and separation from her twin.  And along the way, she will meet a traveler who has come an unimaginable distance--and who threatens the delicate balance of the Stratoins' carefully maintained, perfect society....

Both exciting and insightful, Glory Season is a major novel, a transcendent saga of the human spirit.

In a high-caste society led by genetically-engineered females cloned from their mothers, Maia sets out to win a place for herself in a divided world--and finds adventure and excitement as she traverses the strange and beautiful planet of Stratos. An unforgettable new universe from the bestselling author of Startide Rising.

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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Moving into territory heretofore eschewed by male SF writers, Brin ( Earth ) here presents a world settled by radical feminist separatists, where through genetic engineering most reproduction occurs parthenogenetically, yielding clones of the mothers. On Stratos, skill-specialized clone clans dominate society. Genetic engineering could not entirely eliminate the male role, however, and Stratos's founders were aware of the value of ``variant,'' or sexually reproduced, offspring to generate new combinations of genes, skills and attributes. The heroine, Maia, is such a ``var,'' and the novel traces her traditional banishment (with her twin, Leie) from the clan to seek out her own niche (vars dream of being successful enough to found their own clone clan). Maia's plans soon fall apart; separated from her sister and believing her dead, she runs afoul of smugglers and ends up allied with the strange male Visitor, an emissary from the vast Human Phylum of worlds, whose arrival has triggered political struggles all over Stratos. Should they renew communication with the other human worlds, or would that contaminate their social and biological experiment? Brin's handling of this material is cool and rational. While he criticizes some of the weaknesses of Stratos life, he also makes as good a case for its viability and benefits as might any feminist. An inconclusive ending and some slow pacing mar this otherwise provocative and intriguing new perspective on gender issues. (May)
Library Journal
As a ``var,'' or uncloned female, Maia faces a life on the fringe of the stratified, female clone-based society of Stratos unless she can earn the right to found a dynasty of clones or find some way to change the static world in which she lives. Brin's canny sensitivity about the complexities of human nature transcends gender barriers in a novel that is not so much about ``women's issues'' as the necessity for change and variability. As in Earth ( LJ 4/15/90), the author demonstrates his ability to empathize with all his characters. This complex and gripping tale belongs in most libraries.
Carl Hays
Since the early 1980s, Brin has been forging a well-earned reputation via his award-winning narratives of richly conceived alien and Earthbound civilizations. Perhaps the most impressive display of his mastery of such material to date, "Glory Season" vividly portrays the values and traditions of Stratos, a world dominated by matriarchal families of cloned females, where men and other genetically unique variants or "vars" constitute an oppressed minority. Stratos' cultural topography comes alive through the eyes of a var named Maia, an adolescent girl whose picaresque adventures are absorbingly chronicled through early apprenticeships as deckhand and coal miner, then imprisonment, and ultimately participation in a widespread uprising of fellow vars. One compelling plot twist, as well as an unlikely romantic interest for Maia, arrives in the form of a male, Earth-born outsider whose unheralded arrival on Stratos threatens its ultrafeminist status quo. Throughout the novel's ample length, Brin's prose is consistently engaging and his realization convincing, providing an entirely original extrapolation of cloning technology that sf fans will be talking about for a long time.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780553567670
  • Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
  • Publication date: 5/28/1994
  • Format: Mass Market Paperback
  • Edition description: Reissue
  • Pages: 784
  • Sales rank: 778,368
  • Product dimensions: 4.17 (w) x 6.85 (h) x 1.26 (d)

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4.5
( 8 )
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Sort by: Showing all of 8 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted October 12, 2007

    Wow

    Not only was this a major page-turner, but it is a thought provoker as well. I think women in particular will love this story of a young girl living in a distant world where women rule, and men are barely more than mules. If i have to criticize, i would say David Brin wasn't quite sure how to end this story, or maybe it wasn't the ending i wanted. But the only difficult part was seeing the odd creatures described, and understanding the alien terms used in this book. I think a second reading would prove worthwhile.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 5, 2001

    My favorite book of all time

    The first time I read this book, I couldn't get past the slow first fifty pages. When I finally managed it the second time around, I discovered quite possibly the best book I've ever read. I didn't find the story to be all that sexist; if anything, it only points out how truly foolish sexism is. I was also dragged into the story of Maia, Leie and Renna, and I fell in love with all of them. I can't recommend this book enough. By far my favorite of all time.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 20, 2000

    A must-read Brin novel

    This intense story of an adolescent girl named Maia will get you turning pages faster than you ever have before. It is full of puzzles you will help her solve as well as enemies you will fight with her. Definitely a monumental sci-fi novel of our time.

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