White Mare's Daughter (Hardcover)

This book is set somewhere between 6,000-10,000 years ago and shows the clash of matriarchal and patriarchal cultures. It focuses on a handful of characters, though the main characters are a twin brother and sister who are the last of the matriarchal line in their culture. The sister, Sarama, goes west to seek cultures that still treat women with respect. She finds these people and tries to build a life for herself. Her brother finds himself excommunicated from his people and decides to follow his sister to these lands where women rule, goods are plentiful and there is no war.

This book starts out quite slowly and it's not a quick read. I've seen a review that says that action doesn't start until about page 200 or so; I think it depends on how you look at "action". I enjoyed the slow start to the book because it set the scene quite nicely.

I was very disappointed.

For one thing, there is no serious action going on until almost two hundred pages into the story. All I kept seeing was Sarama, daughter of the Chief of the White Horse People and newly made Servant of Horse Goddess, doing little more than trotting around on her white mare and thinking about how glad she was not to be like all the other women of the tribe: veiled, submissive, and permanently shut away in their tribal tents.

Once in a while, a hint would drop about Old Woman, the previous Priestes and Servant of the Mare who took the infant Sarama and trained her for succession; but there was absolutely no real information about Sarama's life with her. Tarr could have at least devoted one chapter to Sarama's actual upbringing with Old Woman.

Agni, Sarama's twin brother, was more interesting. At least Tarr took the time to develop him into a person. Sure, he's arrogant and short-sighted and thinks that being king is the ultimate calling; but at least he DOES something. The scenes where he captures and trains his own stallion are interesting. When he follows his sister westward, with every intention of subduing the matriarchal culture beyond the Great Wood, Agni actually has to think outside his tribal box and consider the political and strategic ramifications of his actions.

Anyone who has read Sjoo or Gimbutas will find the matriarchal cities very familiar. The women rule, the men serve, and to every query that anyone posits comes the reply: "the Lady wills it". I found that to be as annoying as any Fundementalist tract. The gods in this book (whether it is the Lady, Horse Goddess, or Skyfather) are just as removed as they are in "real life". I read about people worshipping their respective deities and, while the women in the Western cities may have felt some temporary bliss, it seemed to me that they were just going through the motions. There is a good scene where one of the characters relates to Agni about how the women would braid their hair to keep it out of the way. Soon, the fashion became tradition. That's how I viewed the spirituality in this book. The core of faith had long since faded and now it was all just a matter of procedure.

Anyway, I hope to read something better of Judith Tarr in the future.