The Marq'ssan Cycle: Books Two and Three
Dec. 31st, 2007 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bibliogrammaThe Marqu’ssan Cycle, by L. Timmel Duchamp – Volumes 2 and 3
Renegade
Tsunami
I was blown away be the first volume of this series, Alanya to Alanya, which presented a detailed image of a profoundly fascist and anti-feminist state and began to explore both the ways in which such a state (and mindset) damages humans both individually and in community, and the ways in which such a state can be challenged without merely replacing one form of totalitarianism with another.
The second volume, Renegade, focuses more sharply on one of the themes of the first book, how fascist and oppressive structures pervert the human spirit and human relationships, while continuing to tell the broader story of the struggle of people raised in a culture dominated by such structures to resist their power and instead create non-oppressive societies and sociopolitical structures. The core of the book is a harrowing narrative of torture – both physical and psychological - and conditioning that is in its way even more devastating to read than the similar narrative written by Orwell in 1984. In Tsunami, the focus shifts more toward the process of resistance, both from within and from without, but continues to show how one philosophy of structuring and organising human society poisons and corrupts, and how new structures that can be developed that may promise better ways of co-ordinating society and living together as people without opression.
I continue to be profoundly affected and moved by this series, and am counting down the hours until the fourth volume, Blood in the Fruit, arrives. (It’s being published in January by Aqueduct Press, and yes, I have pre-ordered a copy.)
Renegade
Tsunami
I was blown away be the first volume of this series, Alanya to Alanya, which presented a detailed image of a profoundly fascist and anti-feminist state and began to explore both the ways in which such a state (and mindset) damages humans both individually and in community, and the ways in which such a state can be challenged without merely replacing one form of totalitarianism with another.
The second volume, Renegade, focuses more sharply on one of the themes of the first book, how fascist and oppressive structures pervert the human spirit and human relationships, while continuing to tell the broader story of the struggle of people raised in a culture dominated by such structures to resist their power and instead create non-oppressive societies and sociopolitical structures. The core of the book is a harrowing narrative of torture – both physical and psychological - and conditioning that is in its way even more devastating to read than the similar narrative written by Orwell in 1984. In Tsunami, the focus shifts more toward the process of resistance, both from within and from without, but continues to show how one philosophy of structuring and organising human society poisons and corrupts, and how new structures that can be developed that may promise better ways of co-ordinating society and living together as people without opression.
I continue to be profoundly affected and moved by this series, and am counting down the hours until the fourth volume, Blood in the Fruit, arrives. (It’s being published in January by Aqueduct Press, and yes, I have pre-ordered a copy.)