{"id":6322,"date":"2011-10-19T22:04:28","date_gmt":"2011-10-20T04:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=6322"},"modified":"2011-10-19T22:04:28","modified_gmt":"2011-10-20T04:04:28","slug":"goddesses-by-linda-nagata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/goddesses-by-linda-nagata\/","title":{"rendered":"Goddesses by Linda Nagata"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>From the book description:<\/p>\n

Michael Fielding is the newly appointed site director of the Four Villages project in rural India, tasked with guiding the economic development of the region. But a chance encounter with an ailing, homeless, and very young widow plunges him into the maze of an ossified and violent traditional culture, while putting his own career at risk.<\/p>\n

On the other side of the world, Cody Graham\u2019s hazardous waste cleanup company, Green Stomp, has earned a reputation for tackling the toughest, dirtiest jobs around. The harder the challenge, the more Cody likes it. But when chance\u2014and the polluted ground water of Four Villages\u2014brings Michael back into Cody\u2019s life, both are forced to question their shared past, their values, and what it means to do good in the world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This book was a change of pace for me.\u00a0 It’s science fiction, but takes place on a near-future Earth much like our own.\u00a0 In fact, the two driving elements of the story (infertility and economic development) are such contemporary issues that at points, I felt I was reading a piece of mainstream literature.<\/p>\n

The writing is quite good, both on a technical and an artistic level.\u00a0 The storytelling is a little slower, but the character development is very well done, especially for Rajban, the native Indian girl whom Michael takes in and rescues.\u00a0 The parts from her point of view made me think a bit about my friends who did micro-finance after graduation; I think they would like her story a lot.<\/p>\n

As a writer, one thing that interested me was how Nagata started off with a whole bunch of flashbacks and actually pulled it off.\u00a0 They tell you never to do this, but she made it work by grounding those scenes with clear action and a relatable conflict (childbirth, for example), all in the first couple of paragraphs.\u00a0 There were a couple of parts that confused me, but overall I think she handled it very well.<\/p>\n

The ending was a bit ambiguous, which was dissatisfying in some ways but in other ways fit the story much better than a clean wrap-up.\u00a0 The story raises some very thought provoking questions about tradition and modernity, and a more definitive ending would probably have ruined a lot of that.\u00a0 But still, I wish I knew what happened to some of the characters after the end.<\/p>\n

Overall, I’d give this book four stars.\u00a0 If you enjoy science fiction but you’d rather read something grounded in the real world, you’ll probably enjoy this book.\u00a0 If you’re interested in the developing world at all, I’d highly recommend it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the book description: Michael Fielding is the newly appointed site director of the Four Villages project in rural India, tasked with guiding the economic development of the region. But a chance encounter with an ailing, homeless, and very young widow plunges him into the maze of an ossified and violent traditional culture, while putting… Continue reading Goddesses by Linda Nagata<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[112,643,174,615,332],"class_list":["post-6322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-character","tag-contemporary-fiction","tag-ideas-and-concepts","tag-indie-reviews","tag-near-future","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-1DY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6322"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6335,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6322\/revisions\/6335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}