Rating: 
Summary: Turgid Artsy Woman's Novel
Review: "the dazzle of day" is a turgid, artsy woman's novel. It may have deep and hidden inner meaning, if you believe the "log rolling" by the authors on the jacket cover. The story chronicles an intersteller voyage in a generation ship by a multi-ethnic group of Quakers to Epsilon Eridani. The point-of-view is from characters at the beginning of the voyage making the decision to escape Earth, near the end of the voyage facing the prospect of dramatic change in planetary life, and an early pioneer scorning the womb of the ship. Gloss's prose is solid and her tech is good. Her choice of using Quakers as interstellor voyagers was inspirational. In particular, the Japanese/Costa Rican/Norwegian Quaker society of the 5th voyaging genaration put an interesting spin on the story. However, Gloss lost me in the three, thinly threaded jumps in time and seven or eight characters. Perhaps its because this is a women's novel that I just didn't get it. The real story appears to be about female relationships and aging. The the science fiction aspects of the story were there to provide a high contrast background only. I'm not sure why the author had to write this story as science fiction. It could have been a contemporary novel. Finally, this is such a "touchy feely" novel, the tech got short shrift. I wondered, if a generational ship could survive the voyage using the "Green" life-style described in the story. This novel is really slow and low on excitement. The author sets out with a good science fiction premise then elides it to describe a village society. Read it to fall asleep.
Rating: 
Summary: We may travel to the stars, but we are all still human.
Review: An engrossing character-based study of a small community inhabiting a generation ship on the way to colonize a distant star. Gloss emphasizes the sense of community and the human interactions attendant upon such an enterprise. I found her approach in some ways similar to the early Asimov -- the big techno-feats that can make hard core SF both exciting and shallow mostly take place off-stage. This does not mean that the book is technically impoverished. Gloss handles her tech details well, when she wants to use them, and comes up with some interesting comments. For example, on the ship, going 'up' means moving into lower gravity and walking is easier. The first landing party is chagrined to find that on the planet, going up remains hard work. Where the book differs from others is that, in the main, the action centers around the common folk, who have to make do in spite of environmental stress and human frailty. Things happen, and people cope, or not. The book is a charming example of how 'neighborhood SF' can illuminate the human condition, even lightyears from Earth. It is short, intense, and well worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: A Quaker on Quakers...
Review: Being a Quaker I was stunned when this book was given to me by a friend. Molly Gloss captures the essence of Quaker (known within as the Society of Friends) society. It is a fascinating book which uses the tool of science fiction, the suspension of disbelief, to examine the human condition. Thought provoking and deeply human, I found this book drew me in. It is not for those who are into fast ships and nifty gadgets. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: A Quaker on Quakers...
Review: Being a Quaker I was stunned when this book was given to me by a friend. Molly Gloss captures the essence of Quaker (known within as the Society of Friends) society. It is a fascinating book which uses the tool of science fiction, the suspension of disbelief, to examine the human condition. Thought provoking and deeply human, I found this book drew me in. It is not for those who are into fast ships and nifty gadgets. I highly recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: As boring as it is beautiful
Review: I found this book through a recommendation by Ursula LeGuin, as I have found several of my favorites before this, so I was overjoyed to finally lay my hands on it. And then it took me almost as long to read it as it did to obtain it. It may be worth reading if you have a lot of patience.
The whole book might as well have been written from the perspective of a single character. The small details of their interactions and internal workings felt real, but in the scheme of things I could hardly tell Bjoro from Kristina from Juko. They have grudges and feuds without having more than superficial flaws. The only character who caught my attention was Cejo for his sexuality and his deviant views on marriage, and even those were glossed over. No matter their sexes or relative ages, all of the characters have the feel of your longwinded, rambling grandmother reminiscing about times past.
The subject matter is often inherently colorful, but everything--from rape to love to the descriptions of geological features--is filtered through the gray lens of the author's unhurried, uninterested prose. The whole thing is just unapologetically boring. In one ironic part, the author describes for us how bored and impatient Kristina becomes while reading over the minute-by-minute accounts of the Quaker Meetings, and then treats us to thirteen pages of just such a minute-by-minute account of a Meeting. And it's every bit as dull as Kristina found it.
That said, the writing *is* gorgeous and because of it the scenes are often touching despite themselves. I was moved almost to tears by a part in which Bjoro lies on the grass remembering the feel of his long-dead son (note that nothing happens here except lying and remembering). What Dazzle never moved me to was laughter. I cannot recall one instance where the book shed its ponderous dignity long enough to just be amusing. The style often reminded me of dense poetry--it may become beautiful and meaningful after you read it five times, but it's excruciatingly laborious to get to that point. And while I can take it in small doses--like poems--it's not what I'm looking for in a novel.
Rating:
Summary: This is Ursula LeGuin on downers, folks
Review: I found this ponderously slow-moving science fiction novel disappointing. There were, in fact, some potentially interesting elements here: space colonization, a huge spacecraft serving as a long-term artificial living environment for a large number of people, conflict based around whether or not a cold, forboding planet should be settled now, as opposed to "sailing" onward in search of a better destination. But the book itself is dull, turgid, and in too many annoying little ways, implausible. The colonists appear to be ex-Central American Quaker peasants (?) with gratuitously weird names who are supposed to communicate in Esperanto (why?) Whereas this large spacecraft boasts incredibly complex technologies including, apparently, a "cold fusion" source of energy (yeah, right), medicinal practices seem to center around the use of medicinal herbs and the "laying on of hands." The characters are unanimously shallow and dull, and their interactions, while described in excrutiating detail, are seldom particularly interesting. The one promisingly compelling conflict/decision that arises in the entire story centers upon whether or not the community should end their generations-long voyage and settle a cold, uninviting planet, as opposed to spending another fifty or one hundred years sailing on in their self-enclosed space station. This divisive and vexing issue is "resolved," however, suddenly and to my mind, unsatisfactorily through reference to some sappy philosophical/theological gobbledegook that miraculously overtakes the group and leads them to agree on a solution. I'm confident that the author attempted to pattern this book after one of Ursula LeGuin's anthropologically based utopian/feminist novels. LeGuin tends to be long-winded and occasionally turgid, but in the end, she always has something profound to say. Molly Gloss is long-winded and turgid, but unfortunately, offers little of lasting importance to render the considerable effort required of readers worthwhile.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent realistic exploration of space colonization
Review: I really enjoyed reading this book. I found it a refreshing and thoughtful exploration of what colonization of space would be like from the perspective of the colonists. Most sci-fi books I've read either have aliens hand over some near-magic technology or some genius give Earth the trick it needs to get to distant planets with minimal time or effort. This book explores what I believe is a much more likely scenario: that people have to actually work hard for generations to get to their destination. In this book we get to follow these generations of colonists, starting with the first brave souls who work together to get off Earth, and following their descendants as they struggle to reach and colonize a distant world. If you want escapist fantasy, you may be disappointed, but if you want to experience what real space colonists may someday go through, read this book!
Rating: 
Summary: A Wretched, Boring, Silly Book
Review: I'm going to keep my remarks brief; for a longer review that is right on the money, check out the 8/22/99 review from Berkeley. This book was one of the hardest reads of my life. Gloss's use of language is often peculiar, sometimes forcing the reader to go back over passages, not to search out meaning, but just to try to understand what is physically going on. In addition, most of the major characters are either boring or quite unlikable. Finally, nothing seems right in this book -- the Esperanto, the complete lack of "engineering mentality" needed to keep a machine running, the unliklihood of this improbable society surviving aboard a generation ship -- to the point where all credibility is gone. The novel comes alive in only one chapter, where the scouting team explores the target planet. Otherwise, it's one big yawn after another.
Rating:
Summary: grand scale, beautifully told, sci-fi for mature readers
Review: If you are twenty-something or even thirty-something you may not be ready for this book. It starts slowly; the first third is rather static, but the book builds and keeps building to a beautiful conclusion. Intelligently fanticized, Whitmanesque in its reach, The Dazzle of Day stands with the best of Ursulla leGuin in its depiction of a future world in which relationships limn our humanity, and in which courage and staying power are exhibited as much in the quotidian facts of survival and our flashes of insight as in our grander ambitions. This is about marriage and community and one's place on the earth. I recommend it highly.
Rating:
Summary: A thought provoking read
Review: It took me 3 tries over 2 years to get beyond page 50 -- but it was well worth the effort. Since I don't generally read SF, I initially had a hard time envisioning the future world that Gloss describes -- the sails, the ship, the neighborhoods, etc. Ultimately they were incidental to the plot; this is a novel about the lives of people and the decisions they make. Some readers have written that it's a "woman's" book. I think that's entirely off base. There are some central female characters but there are central male characters as well. I thought it was fascinating to learn about the Quakers, the dilemmas they faced, their interaction, their decision making processes, etc. It was a very very interesting book and throughly engrossing.
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