Courtship Rite [Mass Market Paperback]

Published first as "Geta", later as "Courtship Rite"--I think neither title does justice to this fine novel. It ought to be called "The Marriage of Six". Almost two books in one, the first part is a masterful piece of world-building. It introduces characters that shine with complex humanity and weaves their lives together in an engrossing adventure that builds to a harrowing climax. Other novels would end there, but this one, like life itself, moves on. "Who says beginnings are more interesting than middles or endings?" asks one character--and the author shows us that they aren't. Just as an old friend occasionally reveals a new bit of their past, shifting your perception of their entire history, the author saves some of the strangest and most fundamental revelations about his characters for the story's end. The last chapters are a beautiful and reflective coda to the first part of the book; they're a meditation on the many faces of love, the limits of loyalty, and the meaning of marriage. The people of Geta practice a unique form of polygamy, but this novel's emotional center--the quest of the central characters to form a marriage of six, the finest and most balanced team in their society--will ring true to anyone who has ever fallen in love and tried to create a family.

I know what you are thinking...you can't begin to count the number of people who have said; "I've read the greatest book and you have just got to get a hold of it." Well, I am not only making this claim for Courtship Rite, I have become one of those dogged fanatics who scour the used bookstores in the faint hope that I will catch a glimpse of a soft-cover book bearing a familiar Rowena rendering of the maran-kaiel.

I first remember seeing a brief mention of this book in of all places, the opening comic strip in "Heavy Metal". I don't remember which issue (sometime in the early 80s) nor can I even tell you why the name caught my eye but here was this cartoon giving a favourable critique of a book. Intrigued, I found a copy and have not let it go since.

This finely told story is not for the faint of heart as Kingsbury challenges many a puritanical taboo and establishes the realm of a single family in a few well placed strokes of black on a pale ivory canvas. The characters contained within the pages breathe as they struggle to forge a world from a place of hardship and ignorance. Yet they do so with the greatest of intelligence and compassion...which is what drew me first to the Scribe Kingsbury.

The story centers on a marriage of five people (three of whom are brothers and have formed a family they call the maran-kaiel.).

Over a period of time, each has taken a path to ensure the family's strength and success in a world of necessary brutality softened only by the acts of others. The brothers (Hoemei, Joesai and Gaet) have married two women (Noe and Teenae) and are courting a sixth, thus bringing the number of their marriage to the zenith for their culture.

There is a catch. The woman that they are courting to become third-wife (Kathein) is denied them and they are offered instead a woman declared a religious heretic - Oelita - who has determined that the traditional ways of their culture can be cast off for other paths.

The tale is a complex weaving of personalities and hopes. As the pages fly past your eyes, their world unfolds and storms ripple across their developing culture. The Kaiel and the other clans on this forsaken planet are masters at genetic manipulation, intrigue and resource management yet they lack simple tools that we take for granted...inventing things as they go and moulding their world as the stars revolve around them. It is a science fiction story about people and an anthropological study of ourselves.

I have over a long period of years collected approximately seventeen copies of this novel and have been fortunate enough to give away as gifts almost every copy that I have found to friends who now scour the bookstores in search of that elusive Donald M. Kingsbury Classic.

If you have the rare opportunity to find this novel. BUY IT. READ IT. But first, cast off the world as you know it and find the fascinating construct of a culture that could one day exist far from our own spinning rock in the ether....and walk through a doorway into the lives of five quite remarkable people and their struggle to bring the world around to their vision

Not for the faint of heart, as you learn within the first 100 words of the book that Geta is a harsh world with no source of food during a famine other than it's only source of meat -- other human beings. Though this idea is initially repulsive to our way of thinking, you soon discover an incredible morality of the people in this book that far surpasses our own. They cannot imagine a war where they could not eat those they fought. Wars such as we fight today are beyond horrific to them, the most vile form of evil. Makes you really think about our values, and about how easily we tend to accept war. A great read, if you can stomach it. One of my favorite all-time books.