Ammonite

Rating:
Summary: An excellent debut novel
Review: Strong characters, fast pacing and interesting biological speculations make this a recommended read

Rating:
Summary: Gender roles.
Review: The author's focus on the roles people take for themselves in society, and how they deal with how well or ill those roles fit, is what makes this book so special. Ms. Griffith makes you think about yourself and all the people you interact with, while telling a tale that is impossible to put down. The only thing I disliked about this story was that it had to end!

Rating:
Summary: Lesbian phantasy world.
Review: The only reason this book got a prize, is that the category of lesbian SF is very small.The "science" in the book is new-age mumbo-jumbo. The book contradicts itself and is inconsistent.The story is a lesbian dream of a world with children, but without men.

Rating:
Summary: Lesbian softsell
Review: The whole book seemed to be written for lesbian sci-fi readers. Way too much "women ruling the world" and doing a better job garbage. The actual sci-fi parts were good but that counted for only 30 pages or so.

Rating:
Summary: Something for everyone who likes science fiction
Review: This is a fantastic blend of lots of different science fiction elements: a quest story, a huge planetary landscape, anthropology, sociology, viruses and galactic political intrigue. It's populated by humans of all descriptions--flawed, complex, with good and bad intentions. It's a beautifully written book about people and how they respond to crisis and to change. I'm recommending it to all my friends and will definitely be looking for her other work.

Rating:
Summary: Creative and Vibrant, not Cliche'
Review: this was the first Niccola Griffith novel I read, and even though I love her later work, this novel is still my favorite. It artfully blends clearly detailed and vibrant descriptions of the planet and its different cultures with a truly unique perspective on the science of reproduction, viruses, and evolution, and then adds interesting main characters who are thrust into a new world and must change their both their mindsets and their bodies to survive. A true masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: Good but logical inconsistencies bothered me
Review: While I thought this book was well-written and interesting, there were glaring omissions that bothered me. For example, there are males of all the animals and the goths but it never occurs to the "native" women of GP to question why there are no male humans. When the women are deepsearching, some even back to when they first landed on the planet, are there no traumatic memories of the loss of their fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, male friends? It is an interesting society that has been built, but I found myself waiting for some explanation for how the women reacted to this shocking part of their history. I also found it odd that every single women in the story was homosexual, whether native, Mirror or from Estrade. Millions of years of evolution on earth would still produce a majority of heterosexuals on GP unless some other process intervened. I would have liked to have seen some explanation for these things, but I did like the book.