The Gate to Women's Country

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Summary: A controversial classic! Thought-provoking and fun to read
Review: This book is controversial because it's accused of man-bashing. Even the author's publisher said he read it with some discomfort! But Gate to Women's Country doesn't bash men, it bashes human behavior that leads to war and destruction.

The time is post-nuclear apocalypse, several centuries afterward. The tattered remnants of society are isolated clusters of cities. One such cluster is Women's Country. Founded by Martha Evesdaughter, as she called herself, the society is a loose confederation of walled towns, each defended from bandits and each other by a garrison. The boys, at five, go to live with their warrior fathers in the garrison. At 15, they may choose to become a defender and stay in the garrison and take up the art of war, or they may return to become servitors and assist the women in the running of farms and the general economy. Life is not easy; electric power is limited by the wood that can be gathered and burned in the one remaining power plant in just one of the towns. Much knowledge has been lost in the apocalypse; each woman must take up a science, a craft, and an art and study and work her whole life, not only to provide food, medical services and the means of living, but to maintain and grow the knowledge that was once lost. The towns are run under strict ordinances, governed by councils of older women. Servitors have no say in the council, nor do the warriors. Women's Country is...women's country.

This is the backdrop for the story of Stavia Morgotsdaughter, daughter of a doctor and member of the town council of Marthatown. She struggles with adolescent emotions such as rebellion against the ordinances and stirrings of feeling towards a young man. Her sister Myra struggles as well, as teens do, against rules and for becoming independent. Myra eventually moves out of the house and begins her life as a young woman and mother, as many young women do today. Stavia's questioning, mixed-up feelings and growing-up lead her to an adventure, a disastrous decision, and discovering much that was kept hidden about the society.

The surprises and twists of this story unfold as Stavia discovers secret after secret. Her adventure is exciting, and we tremble for her as she takes important steps to her maturity.

This is one of my top ten favorite science fiction books, and my favorite of Sheri Tepper's. Despite what you may hear about this novel, if you love science fiction, especially the kind of sci-fi that creates an entire world with customs, language, and myths, you will love this book. Do not miss it.

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Summary: Interesting & entertaining despite leaps & gaps
Review: Someone recommended 'The Gate to Women's Country' to me in my quest to find an author in the vein of Margaret Atwood. I mentioned 'feminist science fiction' and Tepper's name came up.

While not really Atwoodian in any sense, I enjoyed 'The Gate to Women's Country' nonetheless. The concept was interesting and most of the characters were engaging. While it definitely had feminist themes, Tepper did not allow the novel to get lost in the typical 'women=good & peaceful, men=evil & power-hungry' dynamic that could have easily won out.

Though there were gaps in the story, some under-developed characters and much (in my opinion) that was left unexplained, the novel is pretty good. Grab it from the library or a used bookstore and enjoy some light sci-fi reading.

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Summary: Interesting, but not as good as some of her other books
Review: "The Gate to Women's Country" is what I refer to as soft science fiction. There is very little speculative science in this book, some parapsychological powers, some genetics and that is about it. Rather the speculative "sciences" are in the areas of gender politics and sociology. The story follows the life of Stavia, splitting between her youth and her life at 37. Stavia's world is ours, but about 300 years after a cataclysmic nuclear war. In Stavia's part of the world the genders have split into almost exclusive circles; the women live in walled towns that are protected by garrisions of warrior men. Twice a year, month-long carnivals bring together the men and women for "assignations."

Daughters born of these assignations will live a life of learning and sophistication. Sons will eventually live a life of warfare.

In the end it turns out that the relationships between warriors, women, and servitors (men who chose to live as servants in the city) are much more complex, but rather than having much of a plot, the point of this book is the investigation of those relationships as seen through the eyes of Stavia.

As an investiagion into a culture, this book is an adequate read, but a stronger plot would certainly have helped. More interesting to me is trying to divine the answers to two questions. First, is this book just an examination of a gender separated society, or is it "wouldn't this be great" type of manifesto. Second, I wonder whether Shari Tepper and her fans really believe the idea that male aggression is the root of all evil.

Overall, I strongly recommend Shari Tepper to any reader, but I really don't think this is one of her best works. I would recommend this book only if you can lay your hands on it for cheap.

Rating:
Summary: ideas interesting but flawed
Review: Tepper is very good at creating a mysterious world & also interesting characters, especially female. (i think her male characters are less 3D) but i have 2 problems with the book.

I feel the introduction of "psi" is a big flaw. it seems that she feels those servitors men should be compensated in someway so that readers don't feel too sorry for them becoming "servitors"

also i really have a problem with the selective breeding method. because first if you eliminate the bad (i.e., violence in men), you may eliminate the good qualities that may come with it. I'm not sure there's a "violence gene." can't it be due to enviornment also? If so, than her method would not eliminate violences.

another problem is the gene pool becomes too small. all, or almost all children are fathered by servitors, which is a small percentage of all men, especially, some have a lot children because they're good men. this reducing the gentic diversity. Biologically, this spells disaster to me.

Rating:
Summary: Heavy-handed and hard to get through
Review: This is the third Tepper book I've read, and I'm not a big fan. (I read this for a book discussion.) To be sure, Tepper has her strong points: Sentence-to-sentence she's a fine writer, often quite evocative. Her characters are well-drawn, and she tantalizes with the gradual revelation of her settings and their backgrounds. The Gate to Women's Country has all of these.

Its achilles heel is that it's terribly heavy-handed, painting its strongest male characters as brutes whose base instincts overpower their reason. The women have similar issues, but for them the issues are treated as something natural-if-pitiful, while for the men they're terrible, loathesome things. The whole chain of reasoning here is fairly difficult to swallow. To be fair, I suspect that I'm not part of the book's target audience, being a male and one who's already sympathetic to feminist issues. Moreover, one could argue that Tepper is presenting a certain set of men in this negative light (there is another group who behave differently, although they are not given nearly as much "screen time" and we rarely get into their heads), and that she concocts an explanation for why they are so, but it still makes for terribly difficult reading.

Structurally the book has other problems: It's a sort of morality tale set in its peculiar world, about the burdens those in charge bear and the impact they have on those around them. Additional characters and settings materialize haphazardly at times in the story, and their value seems slight (e.g., the character of Septemius Bird). The overall sense of conflict seems somewhat contrived, as though a few people "in the know" in the book could have stopped things before they went too far. And overall the book is relentlessly melancholy, almost never presenting any sense of joy or hope.

A really, really tough read, and ultimately not really worth it, I felt.

Rating:
Summary: Did I Miss Something?
Review: After reading the reviews for this book and comparing it to my own experience, I wonder if I missed something. I loved the idea and the characters in the book but I didn't much like the plot. There were definitely certain things that stood out about it, particularly the Holylanders and what occurs on account of them, but it wasn't enough for me to like the plot overall. I found the book somewhat boring, especially the first 100 pages.

I was disappointed because I thought I was in for a real good read, and I really wish I got what others have gotten out of it.

Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: This book is stunningly written. When I first picked it up, I wasn't sure about it. After a few pages, I couldn't put it down. I read it in one day! I have also read Plague of Angels and it was the same way. Some people may be turned off by the slow beginnings to her book, but Tepper sure knows how to enthrall her readers!

Rating:
Summary: thought-provoking
Review: I have read very little sci-fi in my time, but if this is what it is like, I may be a new fan of the genre. The book never felt trite or rushed in any way. In fact, towards the beginning of the story it was almost maddening to me that I couldn't quite guess the secrets going on. The novel definitely portrayed the negatives of this society, while also touting its virtues. She also did a great job leaving the subject open to further thought.

Rating:
Summary: Great creation
Review: Tepper has once again created a complex world and filled it with real people pulled by many strings down many roads. A bit too political and preachy at times, it is a rare book in that it portrays a matriarchy as not only possible but also neither fully positive or negative. This was the first book of hers I read, and it is favorite to date.

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Summary: Most people just don't get it....
Review: After reading the other reviews for this book, I realized that the point of the book was lost on some of the readers, especially the person who thinks Tepper is offering eugenics as a "solution." This book is not putting forth a utopian society that Tepper is saying is the "way to go." The whole point is that what is happening in the book is bad. The men's society is bad, and the women's answer to it is just as bad. The women are denying the men an education and thus a means to better themselves, and they are manipulating the men into fighting with each other. What Tepper is showing is not the way to make a male-bashing world that angry women would love -- what she is showing is the very real problem of governing, of deciding what truly is "the lesser of the evils," of the terrible choices at stake in this particular society. She is not holding up the women as heroes and the men as villains. It is much more complex and rich than that. It's an incredible story about being human, about government, and about what sort of mistakes a female government might make, and how those might differ from men's mistakes (but be just as bad in the long run).