From Publishers Weekly
Jones's fiction (Divine Endurance; White Queen) is notable for richly textured dystopias teeming with exotically different cultures; this new novel, set in Earth's far future, is no exception. The magical robotic doll Chosen Among the Beautiful loves the "failed" (because she is infertile) woman Derveet, who is the last of the hereditary rulers of the Garuda family. Together, doll and woman join forces with two "studs" (a prince and a clown who, unlike most men, have not been rendered eunuchs), as well as with a sturdy young woman of the privileged class, to penetrate the dangerous Asian Peninsula, find a cache of the nearly mythical hallucinogen flowerdust (which blooms only once every 100 years) and, in the process, expose the mysterious Rulers' plot to wipe humans off the planet for good. The difficulties the band encounters range from social mores involving male/female relationships in a matriarchal society to peasants' planting rice in stagnant fields of salt water, to the resurgence of ancient, deadly diseases. As in Jones's other work, action and plot take a backseat to politics and plays for power, as the author and her characters revel in the victories of love over apathy.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The sequel to Jones' critically acclaimed
Divine Endurance (1984) returns to a chaotic, future Southeast Asia and resumes the adventures of Derveet, a rebel against the matriarchal government, and Cho, her sweet-tempered, bioengineered servant. Wandering through the refugee camps of the peninsular state of Ranganar, Derveet continues building support for an insurrection against the Rulers and their enforcement troops, the Koperasi, when she discovers refugees taking flowerdust, a rare drug that imparts blissful hallucinations to the imbiber. With the help of Endang, an embittered, expatriate member of a ruling family, and Jhonni, a Ranganar citizen, Derveet must steal the flowerdust from its Koperasi distributors, who are using the drug to stir up unrest among the refugees and thereby justify their own existence. Jones serves up a heady mixture of complex political intrigue and sometimes confusing intercultural conflict that may appeal only to a small audience. Yet her rich characterizations and fully imagined settings stretch the boundaries of sf to the most literate extremity.
Carl Hays
