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Heart of Gold

Heart of Gold

List Price: $6.99
Your Price: $6.29
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This cover is much better!
Review: Ah, I notice that the book this review is with is obviously not the same edition I received as a gift -- the woman above is actually the color she should be: blue with black hair. The other edition had a woman whose coloring was white and it just completely mismatched with the book. So what is good about this book? It looks at two societies (there are three different races but one, the "white," is all but ignored) who in sociological terms are opposites. One is matriarchical and the other patriarchical -- it is clear from the characters and their lives however that the patriarchical one is far more repressive to its people (females are property, can't do business, don't have a public voice, and children are nothing until the age of 12) than the matriarchical one (where men are expected to become husbands and fathers first and only females directly inherit). The two main characters, Kit and Nolan, show us the same events, the same time period from their different eyes until they meet and travel together. This provides the reader with unique perspectives and a real interest in both characters lives. We are pleased by the end even though it may be that trouble is just starting on this world and for them.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An enjoyable read
Review: Another nice effort by Shinn, although perhaps not quite up to the caliber or originality of her earlier work. As always, she includes an interracial love story between unlikely characters as the backdrop for an examination of society and politics, with all of its prejudices and hypocrisies. This time, her characters and their world did not seem as fully fleshed out as usual and the love story seemed almost an afterthought. Still, an enjoyable read and I look forward to her next work!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: the Fantasy equivalent of West Side Story, with a twist
Review: Fascinating character developments and a very detailed fictious culture (or rather, cultures). It deals with an abstract science fiction take on racial and gender discrimination. Despite the amazingly complex social structures the author has created, and it's strong main characters, it does have a weak point. The novel hints to potentially interesting foriegn technologies, but doesn't really elaborate on this fabricated universe.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great book
Review: Fascinating character developments and a very detailed fictious culture (or rather, cultures). It deals with an abstract science fiction take on racial and gender discrimination. Despite the amazingly complex social structures the author has created, and it's strong main characters, it does have a weak point. The novel hints to potentially interesting foriegn technologies, but doesn't really elaborate on this fabricated universe.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Socio-Cultural SF
Review: From Sharon Shinn, author of the intriguing Archangel and its sequels...Once again, Shinn postulates a society, sets up cultural histories, mores and racial divides, and sort of just sees what happens...In this case, the three distinct races of the land, the indigos, albinos and gulden, are locked in a complicated love-hate relationship based on commerce, prejudice and power, with most of the tension between the matriarchal blueskins against the patriarchal goldskins...There some aspects of a good romance novel about this book, with a rebel, socialist-minded daughter of a rich blueskin clan, brought up in gulden territory and now trying to find her place in the world...and a mild-mannered indigo man, raised to be inconsequential, discovering that his love of science and medicine is, indeed, of consequence...Elegant society balls, violent community sabotage, country estates, city ghettos, and the age-old story of male domination versus female domination... Shinn writes really well, getting better with every book. Her societies are so believable, her characters so distinct, both major and minor ones. I enjoy how the small agonies and ecstacies, triumphs and trials, of these people gradually reveal the shape of their world. Logical, loving, a nice read.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Absolutely brilliant
Review: Heart of Gold is one of the most amazing books I have ever read. I have enjoyed all of Sharon Shinn's books, but I am still stunned by the depth and focus of this novel. Shinn avoids simplistic answers to racial and political issues, while successfully creating characters of flesh, bone, and emotion who are painfully trapped in social structures that block them from connecting with the people that they love while remaining true to who they are. A great heart-opening and mind-expanding read.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Absolutely brilliant
Review: Heart of Gold is one of the most amazing books I have ever read. I have enjoyed all of Sharon Shinn's books, but I am still stunned by the depth and focus of this novel. Shinn avoids simplistic answers to racial and political issues, while successfully creating characters of flesh, bone, and emotion who are painfully trapped in social structures that block them from connecting with the people that they love while remaining true to who they are. A great heart-opening and mind-expanding read.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Racial tension
Review: Heart of Gold manages to explore the conundrum of two races which co-exist but totaly despise each other. The Indigo and the Gulden have no seeming wish to mix together, and much of the novel deals with, how attitudes that we have been indoctrinated with continue to shape perception even as adults when your attitude changes from observation. Two different cultures with patriarchy for the Gulden and Matriarchy for the Indigo. This basic difference illuminates the other cultural differences between the two races. The Indigo hold the arrable land and a greater population base. The Gulden have mastered technology but are being pushed back from their borders by the expanding Indigo population. The only question I have to ask about the direction of the novel is why the inclusion of the third race of the novel, the Albino. They don't appear to play any part in the race relations, and the only thing you are told about them is that they exist. An excelent book, dealing with perception, observation, and prejudice, and the leangths to which some people will go to achieve racial purity.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Racial tension
Review: Heart of Gold manages to explore the conundrum of two races which co-exist but totaly despise each other. The Indigo and the Gulden have no seeming wish to mix together, and much of the novel deals with, how attitudes that we have been indoctrinated with continue to shape perception even as adults when your attitude changes from observation. Two different cultures with patriarchy for the Gulden and Matriarchy for the Indigo. This basic difference illuminates the other cultural differences between the two races. The Indigo hold the arrable land and a greater population base. The Gulden have mastered technology but are being pushed back from their borders by the expanding Indigo population. The only question I have to ask about the direction of the novel is why the inclusion of the third race of the novel, the Albino. They don't appear to play any part in the race relations, and the only thing you are told about them is that they exist. An excelent book, dealing with perception, observation, and prejudice, and the leangths to which some people will go to achieve racial purity.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Disappointing read from one of my favorite authors.
Review: I automatically buy everything that Sharon Shinn puts out. It's habit now. I mean, she is JUST that good.

So I was disappointed by "Heart of Gold", which, in my opinion, was lacking just that -- a heart.

The heroine I found nearly impossible to like, and the hero extremely wimpy and bland. The setting was confusing, and the writing style did not carry it through like it should.

I found out later that this book was actually a reprint of one of Sharon's earliest novels, which explains alot. Her later works are much more palatable.


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