Califia's Daughters...

[fajrdrako]

I have greatly enjoyed Laurie R. King's mystery novels about San Francisco detective Kate Martinelli. I listened to the audio-book of The Beekeeper's Apprentice, and enjoyed it, too, even though they feature Sherlock Holmes and I came to hate the Sherlock Holmes novels by overdosing on them as a teen. But I like her approach to Holmes - not a copy of Conan Doyle's style or stories, but something new on the theme.

So I was pleased to learn that she was the author of Califia's Daughters, though she used a pseudonym: Leigh Richards. I liked the cover picture, of a woman in an ornate brass helmet overlooking a ruined city of skyscrapers. Yes, I like post-Apocalyptic stories.

So it was a disappointment to not like this book. Two problems: one, there are no ruined cities. It's all rural and bucolic, and I found myself wondering if I have ever enjoyed a story with a harvest festival in it. Is there a harvest festival in Precious Bane? Supernatural? Anyway, the harvest festival here, full of the kind of dances and games you'd find at a Church Fete, interested me not at all.

The second problem: everyone in the book seemed the same to me. Men, women, children, villains, heroes, old people, all seemed to have the same sort of speech patterns and modulation in my head. Once I noticed, I couldn't get past that. It was like a play in which the same actor comes in and out of the story in different costumes, but always does it the same way.

The story: In a post-apocalyptic world, men are a small proportion of the population, both vulnerable and valuable. A man and his son come to the valley that is the central focus of the story, befriend the women there, and stay; with a horror-story of an imperialistic Queen Bess who is invading Oregon. So Dian, protector of the valley, goes to his home to discover the secret that is being hidden in his homeland, and ends up taking on the forces of Queen Bess herself, as an infiltrating warrior.

I didn't much like the story when it was all about the farming, and I didn't like it much more when it was about the low-tech feminazis.

Boring.