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Exile Waiting, The
The time is the distant future. Earth has been rendered uninhabitable by terrible storms during which its only city, Center, constructed around a natural cave system, is sealed from the outside. Mischa, a young thief whose capabilities are enhanced by hereditary mutation, is trying to escape with her drug addicted brother from the dominance of her uncle. When a starship arrives, commanded by the twin alien pseudo-sibs, Subone & Subtwo, Mischa seizes her chance. All goes well until Subone, in a moment of cruelty, lures Mischa's brother into a fight, killing him. Mischa exacts her revenge, but then has to flee the wrath of the aliens and take refuge back in the deep caves underneath the city.
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First published September 1, 1975
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About the author
Vonda N. McIntyre
159 books371 followersVonda Neel McIntyre was a U.S. science fiction author. She was one of the first successful graduates of the Clarion Science fiction writers workshop. She attended the workshop in 1970. By 1973 she had won her first Nebula Award, for the novelette "Of Mist, and Grass and Sand." This later became part of the novel Dreamsnake, which won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. The novelette and novel both concern a female healer in a desolate primitivized venue. McIntyre's debut novel was The Exile Waiting which was published in 1975. Her novel Dreamsnake won the Nebula Award and Hugo Award for best novel in 1978 and her novel The Moon and the Sun won the Nebula in 1997. She has also written a number of Star Trek and Star Wars novels, including Enterprise: The First Adventure and The Entropy Effect. She wrote the novelizations of the films Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews
January 16, 2026
Twentieth-century science fiction was obsessed with telepathy. There’s something odd, uncanny, off, about even the greatest of these telepathy novels. Exile Waiting is reminiscent, in different ways, of two of my favorite novels on the theme, Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and the Stars, with its far-future cities and remnant humanities, and Octavia Butler’s Mind of My Mind, with its psychic suffering, communities tortured by their shared perceptions, and interrogation of slavery. McIntyre’s handling of these themes is not particularly original—but like those other, greater novels, she taps into something deep and difficult and affecting.
The Exile Waiting (1975) was Vonda McIntyre’s first novel, published two years after her Nebula-winning story “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand,” and three years before the Hugo and Nebula winning masterpiece based on that story, Dreamsnake. The Exile Waiting is set in Dreamsnake’s world—in the cave-city, Center, that hovered on the border of Dreamsnake’s desert and its plot.
Dreamsnake is certainly the better novel—richer, more elegant, more original—but I loved The Exile Waiting just as much. The two novels complement each other. They cover similar thematic ground in completely different ways, and their world building is complimentary. We don’t return anywhere we’ve already been; don’t learn anything we might have already guessed. The portrait of distant-future Earth that emerges from the two books is immersive and recursive. I only wish there were more of these books. (I’m even wondering if there might be loose short stories set around Center or across the desert I might hunt down in old magazines or anthologies.)
A lot of what McIntyre does here should be silly. Her descriptions of sex slavery come across more Barbarella than radical feminist. Psychic mutants exiled to underground caves; arrogant spacemen intent on global domination; a plucky, cleverer-than-the-rest heroine; decadent aristocratic houses caught in not-quite-stable equilibrium; underground military facilities filled with ancient, perfectly self-maintaining machinery; a long third-act set-piece chase scene—any of it could have come from just about any science fiction novel published between 1950 and 1980. And yet, something about McIntyre’s execution absorbed me completely; made me feel as if this novel were far more original than a superficial accounting of its story beats or worldbuilding would suggest. It’s just good. I just loved it.
The Exile Waiting (1975) was Vonda McIntyre’s first novel, published two years after her Nebula-winning story “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand,” and three years before the Hugo and Nebula winning masterpiece based on that story, Dreamsnake. The Exile Waiting is set in Dreamsnake’s world—in the cave-city, Center, that hovered on the border of Dreamsnake’s desert and its plot.
Dreamsnake is certainly the better novel—richer, more elegant, more original—but I loved The Exile Waiting just as much. The two novels complement each other. They cover similar thematic ground in completely different ways, and their world building is complimentary. We don’t return anywhere we’ve already been; don’t learn anything we might have already guessed. The portrait of distant-future Earth that emerges from the two books is immersive and recursive. I only wish there were more of these books. (I’m even wondering if there might be loose short stories set around Center or across the desert I might hunt down in old magazines or anthologies.)
A lot of what McIntyre does here should be silly. Her descriptions of sex slavery come across more Barbarella than radical feminist. Psychic mutants exiled to underground caves; arrogant spacemen intent on global domination; a plucky, cleverer-than-the-rest heroine; decadent aristocratic houses caught in not-quite-stable equilibrium; underground military facilities filled with ancient, perfectly self-maintaining machinery; a long third-act set-piece chase scene—any of it could have come from just about any science fiction novel published between 1950 and 1980. And yet, something about McIntyre’s execution absorbed me completely; made me feel as if this novel were far more original than a superficial accounting of its story beats or worldbuilding would suggest. It’s just good. I just loved it.
June 18, 2023
This is a debut novel of Vonda N. McIntyre, which was nominated for Nebula Awards in 1976, but lost to The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. That year the number of novel nominees was really huge – 18 entries, and this sadly affected the average quality of the nominees. I read it as a part of the monthly reading for June 2023 at Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels group.
The novel is set in the same post-apocalyptic Earth as her later novel Dreamsnake, but if Dreamsnake mostly follows outside wastes, this book delves into the only high-tech society on the planet, the underground Center, the only ‘civilization’ which survived a nuclear war, even if this survival is questionable. Despite the Center represents the sole remaining technological civilization on Earth and serves as a port for starships arriving from the Sphere (colonized planets that have left Earth behind), it is a clannish society where slavery is a norm.
“It isn’t dead, it’s dying. And that’s worse.”
The story follows the primary and secondary lines: on the one hand, there is Mischa, a young woman thief endowed with a form of telepathy akin to empathy, enabling her to perceive the emotions of others. She aspires to leave Earth with her elder brother Chris, who raised her but now is a semi-conscious drug addict. Mischa also has a younger sister Gemmie, who is underdeveloped but has a strong telepathic link to her siblings and their uncle (who ‘cares’ for her) makes her uncomfortable so that the telepathic backlash forces Mischa to steal.
The minor line, which actually starts the book is about a young man of half-Japanese descent Jan Hiraku (and is partially given via his diaries), who actually is in the reverse direction - he accompanies a dying blind navigator striving to return to Earth. To accomplish that he joins the starship crew of merchants/mercenaries headed by two "sub" brothers, Subone and Subtwo. They are the result of an experiment of ‘linking’ reactions of two genetically unrelated so they form a tandem like some twins. Actually, they are still different, e.g. Subone wholeheartedly embraces the decadence and slavery of the Center, while Subtwo recoils from it.
The novel is fine for a debut, but I cannot say it is very strong.
The novel is set in the same post-apocalyptic Earth as her later novel Dreamsnake, but if Dreamsnake mostly follows outside wastes, this book delves into the only high-tech society on the planet, the underground Center, the only ‘civilization’ which survived a nuclear war, even if this survival is questionable. Despite the Center represents the sole remaining technological civilization on Earth and serves as a port for starships arriving from the Sphere (colonized planets that have left Earth behind), it is a clannish society where slavery is a norm.
“It isn’t dead, it’s dying. And that’s worse.”
The story follows the primary and secondary lines: on the one hand, there is Mischa, a young woman thief endowed with a form of telepathy akin to empathy, enabling her to perceive the emotions of others. She aspires to leave Earth with her elder brother Chris, who raised her but now is a semi-conscious drug addict. Mischa also has a younger sister Gemmie, who is underdeveloped but has a strong telepathic link to her siblings and their uncle (who ‘cares’ for her) makes her uncomfortable so that the telepathic backlash forces Mischa to steal.
The minor line, which actually starts the book is about a young man of half-Japanese descent Jan Hiraku (and is partially given via his diaries), who actually is in the reverse direction - he accompanies a dying blind navigator striving to return to Earth. To accomplish that he joins the starship crew of merchants/mercenaries headed by two "sub" brothers, Subone and Subtwo. They are the result of an experiment of ‘linking’ reactions of two genetically unrelated so they form a tandem like some twins. Actually, they are still different, e.g. Subone wholeheartedly embraces the decadence and slavery of the Center, while Subtwo recoils from it.
The novel is fine for a debut, but I cannot say it is very strong.
March 8, 2015
I love how Vonda McIntyre writes. 'Dreamsnake' was one of my favorite books as a young teenager, but my local library didn't have all of her books, so I still have some to read!
I really liked 'The Exile Waiting,' but at the same time, I think I would have liked it even more if I had read it back in the early '80s.
It's got tons of cool stuff in it:
A wealthy, half-Japanese heir from a luxury planet, escaping a troubled relationship with his father, hitches a ride with a pair of experimentally-identical mercenaries and their band, aboard their starship, in order to accommodate the dying wish of his blind, poet lover to see Earth and be buried there.
Meanwhile, the young telepath Mischa, living in the dying, post-apocalyptic cavern cities of Earth, seeks a way off-planet for herself and her drug-addicted but artistically talented brother. Unfortunately, she's subject to the blackmail of her evil, Fagin-esque uncle, who forces her to steal for him using the mental abilities of her disabled sister...
Got all that? There's more!
And that's actually a weakness of the book. There are so many disparate and unusual characters, from different (and alien) backgrounds, that there isn't room in the not-very-long novel to properly explore them all. Many of their motivations remain opaque; their characters not fully explained. Not all of the actions seem logical, and the "science" is seriously questionable. (As far as that, I just chuck science out the window and call it science-fantasy. I LIKE post-apocalyptic mutants; who cares if that's not what radiation really does?!) And the latter portion of the book abruptly turns into an extended chase scene, which I felt was a bit unbelievable and unnecessary.
I love the imagery: caves full of gorgeous, crystal toxic-waste stalactites, elegant slave-women, bizarre troglodytes, stark space-age corridors, caverns full of skeletons, glowing with luminous fungus...
I like the repeated theme of different types of slavery, and the different ways in which one can become free.
Flaws and all, I'd still highly recommend the book.
I really liked 'The Exile Waiting,' but at the same time, I think I would have liked it even more if I had read it back in the early '80s.
It's got tons of cool stuff in it:
A wealthy, half-Japanese heir from a luxury planet, escaping a troubled relationship with his father, hitches a ride with a pair of experimentally-identical mercenaries and their band, aboard their starship, in order to accommodate the dying wish of his blind, poet lover to see Earth and be buried there.
Meanwhile, the young telepath Mischa, living in the dying, post-apocalyptic cavern cities of Earth, seeks a way off-planet for herself and her drug-addicted but artistically talented brother. Unfortunately, she's subject to the blackmail of her evil, Fagin-esque uncle, who forces her to steal for him using the mental abilities of her disabled sister...
Got all that? There's more!
And that's actually a weakness of the book. There are so many disparate and unusual characters, from different (and alien) backgrounds, that there isn't room in the not-very-long novel to properly explore them all. Many of their motivations remain opaque; their characters not fully explained. Not all of the actions seem logical, and the "science" is seriously questionable. (As far as that, I just chuck science out the window and call it science-fantasy. I LIKE post-apocalyptic mutants; who cares if that's not what radiation really does?!) And the latter portion of the book abruptly turns into an extended chase scene, which I felt was a bit unbelievable and unnecessary.
I love the imagery: caves full of gorgeous, crystal toxic-waste stalactites, elegant slave-women, bizarre troglodytes, stark space-age corridors, caverns full of skeletons, glowing with luminous fungus...
I like the repeated theme of different types of slavery, and the different ways in which one can become free.
Flaws and all, I'd still highly recommend the book.
June 8, 2020
A wonderful example of feminist science fiction. McIntyre's world is intriguing and haunting--the caverns, , the elusive Sphere, which we never see the way we expect even as its talked about contstantly , the various forms of mind-linkage. It's fast-paced and readable; the prose is straightforwardly effective. This novel, her first, doesn't have any individually iconic lines (like "She gave up her heart quite willingly" the first line of her story "Aztecs" and which, in slightly modified form is also the first line of the related novel Superluminal) but it works. We are thrown in from the beginning, with a journal entry of a character who we won't see "live" (though we will receive journal entries) until about chapter 7. Jan Hikaru's "Contacts in a spaceport bazaar are tenuous and quickly broken" tells us the kind of world we are in, and if it takes us a while to piece together everything, all the better. The novel demands we acclimate ourselves to each strand of the narrative before weaving them together, a strong complement and counterpoint to the threads of automatic response and demanding, unwilled, connection that run through the book.
The Exile Waiting is a book that is deeply about connection--Mischa and Chris and Gemmi, and the pseudosibs at the far ends, in the realm of the speculative and the extreme, but also more quotidian relations, like Jan and his friend. It's about abuse--both intimately personal and hugely structural--and how it both shoots through connection and can be opposed by it. The novel takes its speculations seriously, thinking about the social shape of everything it introduces with lucid prose. I recommend it to anyone looking to try McIntyre's work or interested in science fiction more generally.
The Exile Waiting is a book that is deeply about connection--Mischa and Chris and Gemmi, and the pseudosibs at the far ends, in the realm of the speculative and the extreme, but also more quotidian relations, like Jan and his friend. It's about abuse--both intimately personal and hugely structural--and how it both shoots through connection and can be opposed by it. The novel takes its speculations seriously, thinking about the social shape of everything it introduces with lucid prose. I recommend it to anyone looking to try McIntyre's work or interested in science fiction more generally.
June 28, 2018
Set on the same post-apocalypse Earth as the author's novel Dreamsnake, this takes the reader inside the closed community of Center which was briefly encountered in that other novel (which I think was published after this one, but I've read them out of order). Center is the only technological society left on the planet and is the port of call for starships from the Sphere - the colonised worlds which have left Earth behind as a ruined backwater apart from traders who come to sell goods which cannot be obtained otherwise. Part of the story is told through the journal of a half Japanese young man who accompanies a dying navigator who wants to return to her home planet - he is sceptical that she could really have been born there, but with FTL (faster than light) travel, it is theoretically possible that she left Earth long ago. The rest concerns Mischa, a young thief who is also a kind of telepath - more like an empath really, as she senses the emotions of others.
Center is a dysfunctional society which features slavery and the deliberate maiming of children to turn them into beggars. The economy depends heavily on space travellers and also the caravaneers who travel over the desert to bring their goods in the season when the destructive sandstorms do not blow. It is run by hereditary families who control key aspects such as the nuclear power plant which provides the lighting etc - Center is a huge underground bunker, built into a cave system - and the trade with outsiders.
Mischa wants to leave Earth, taking her elder brother Chris who brought her up but is now a drug addict and depends on her to pay his tribute to their uncle. Their uncle forces Mischa to steal by using their sister Gemmie, a kind of destructive telepath who is able to 'call' in Mischa and Chris, and keep screaming until they have to give in. Because of Gemmie, it has been impossible to escape Center. When Mischa tries to appeal to the head of the family which deals with access to the space visitors, she is treated as a criminal and flogged. Then, during the sandstorm season, a ship lands - the one on which the space navigator and her young escort are passengers. Two beings, Subone and Subtwo, lead the raiders also onboard: they are the results of an experiment in which they were trained and linked mentally - now they are starting to grow apart in character, with Subone probably having murdered the experimenter.
The two sub "brothers" try to take over Center but soon discover the complexities of Center society and the need to keep the various families onboard. Subone takes to the decadence wholeheartedly whereas Subtwo is repelled by it although he becomes obsessed with the administrator of the space-dealing family: a slave whose only official name is Madame and whom he dreams of freeing. Meanwhile Mischa hopes to apply to the subs with more success, but falls foul of the growing split between them, Subone's violent nature, and Subtwo's reluctance to cut ties with him.
I first read this book years ago and enjoyed it, but I found it disappointing this time around. None of the characters seem well developed, perhaps because there are so many of them and it is quite a short book by modern standards. A big chunk is an extended chase sequence through the cave systems, which is not very interesting. Mischa is a bit of a Mary Sue character: when she is briefly given some education, she turns out to be a maths genius, for example. Certain things happen which are extremely convenient but remove conflict from the story; not what you would normally want in a novel. I didn't find the Center way of life particularly convincing. And I was hoping for an explanation of a puzzling sequence in Dreamsnake where the Center man who communicates with the characters in that story goes beserk when they mention that they want to clone Dreamsnakes as if there was a big backstory that was covered in this novel - but there is nothing about either cloning or any kind of snake, so his objection remains a mystery. So I can only really rate this at 2 stars.
Center is a dysfunctional society which features slavery and the deliberate maiming of children to turn them into beggars. The economy depends heavily on space travellers and also the caravaneers who travel over the desert to bring their goods in the season when the destructive sandstorms do not blow. It is run by hereditary families who control key aspects such as the nuclear power plant which provides the lighting etc - Center is a huge underground bunker, built into a cave system - and the trade with outsiders.
Mischa wants to leave Earth, taking her elder brother Chris who brought her up but is now a drug addict and depends on her to pay his tribute to their uncle. Their uncle forces Mischa to steal by using their sister Gemmie, a kind of destructive telepath who is able to 'call' in Mischa and Chris, and keep screaming until they have to give in. Because of Gemmie, it has been impossible to escape Center. When Mischa tries to appeal to the head of the family which deals with access to the space visitors, she is treated as a criminal and flogged. Then, during the sandstorm season, a ship lands - the one on which the space navigator and her young escort are passengers. Two beings, Subone and Subtwo, lead the raiders also onboard: they are the results of an experiment in which they were trained and linked mentally - now they are starting to grow apart in character, with Subone probably having murdered the experimenter.
The two sub "brothers" try to take over Center but soon discover the complexities of Center society and the need to keep the various families onboard. Subone takes to the decadence wholeheartedly whereas Subtwo is repelled by it although he becomes obsessed with the administrator of the space-dealing family: a slave whose only official name is Madame and whom he dreams of freeing. Meanwhile Mischa hopes to apply to the subs with more success, but falls foul of the growing split between them, Subone's violent nature, and Subtwo's reluctance to cut ties with him.
I first read this book years ago and enjoyed it, but I found it disappointing this time around. None of the characters seem well developed, perhaps because there are so many of them and it is quite a short book by modern standards. A big chunk is an extended chase sequence through the cave systems, which is not very interesting. Mischa is a bit of a Mary Sue character: when she is briefly given some education, she turns out to be a maths genius, for example. Certain things happen which are extremely convenient but remove conflict from the story; not what you would normally want in a novel. I didn't find the Center way of life particularly convincing. And I was hoping for an explanation of a puzzling sequence in Dreamsnake where the Center man who communicates with the characters in that story goes beserk when they mention that they want to clone Dreamsnakes as if there was a big backstory that was covered in this novel - but there is nothing about either cloning or any kind of snake, so his objection remains a mystery. So I can only really rate this at 2 stars.
June 24, 2021
Admittedly, not an approachable book, and one that encouraged me to give up. McIntyre here subscribes to the school of throwing the reader right into the midst, and without cover blurbs I would have found myself lost in the talk about the Center and the Palace and the Sphere and all the rest.
And the characters are a collection of fascinatingly damaged people, including one that in a later era of writing would be telegraphing the autism spectrum. Mischa's telepathy is a constant low-level sensory experience for her that fascinates with how it shapes her personality: it isn't a flashlight shine and turn off, but is part of her low-level awareness and how she relates to others. Especially when it is used as a weapon against her by ruthless family members.
The story is specific in its evocation of emotion, and the bindings between people. In particular, the loss of agency and how these people regain it.
But as a whole the setting of this weird underground city and its under-underground cavern substructure never quite gelled. The action parts were compelling, with a weird beauty to the caves--crystallized toxic waste, mutant dwellers--but were murky and unspecific. The city itself never formed a picture in my head other than "more cave than structure" and "crowded but not, opulent but not, destitute but not".
And the characters are a collection of fascinatingly damaged people, including one that in a later era of writing would be telegraphing the autism spectrum. Mischa's telepathy is a constant low-level sensory experience for her that fascinates with how it shapes her personality: it isn't a flashlight shine and turn off, but is part of her low-level awareness and how she relates to others. Especially when it is used as a weapon against her by ruthless family members.
The story is specific in its evocation of emotion, and the bindings between people. In particular, the loss of agency and how these people regain it.
But as a whole the setting of this weird underground city and its under-underground cavern substructure never quite gelled. The action parts were compelling, with a weird beauty to the caves--crystallized toxic waste, mutant dwellers--but were murky and unspecific. The city itself never formed a picture in my head other than "more cave than structure" and "crowded but not, opulent but not, destitute but not".
June 24, 2020
Though they can be read completely independently, this is somewhat of a companion to Dreamsnake—the story of the underground City, while Dreamsnake is about the surface nomads in an apocalyptic future. This is from the classic period of pre- or post- or occurring apocalypse.
April 3, 2017
Ahoy there mateys! I was first introduced to this author when I read her Nebula award-winning novel, the moon and the sun. That one is set in the court of Louis XIV and deals with sea monsters. Awesome. Read long ago, that novel always made me want to read her other works.
This novel was her first and is a sci-fi published in 1975. It was rather annoying to get a hold of because it seems to be out of print. But I persevered and read it. Despite some silly seeming scientific facts, it certainly was enjoyable and worth the effort.
Side note: Apparently ye can now buy many of her works in e-book form directly from her website!
The story concerns a telepathic girl named Mischa who lives in the last surviving city on Earth. Being telepathic is not something that makes Mischa’s life easy and being discovered could easily led to her death. In fact, the author’s take on telepathy in this novel was wonderful. It can be useful tool but overall is primarily horrible for Mischa. I am used to the version of telepathy in more recent novels that are seemingly effortless.
The city’s political and social structures were the highlights for me. Slavery is a big theme in this novel but even the top citizens of the world seem to be stuck in a less than stellar environment. Mischa of course is the plucky orphan who is trying to escape Earth. Her goal is to get on a ship to take her and her sick, useless, but beloved brother to a new life.
Plots are failing and Mischa’s options look bleaker than ever. When a ship lands on Earth during an off season time period and these twin brothers/clones take over the Earth, she might have one last shot at success.
With mutants, magic, clones, underground chases, excellent side characters, and thievery to boot, this novel had a cleverly setup premise and plot. The execution left a little something to be desired in the middle of the book due to the chase scene that could have been shorter, but I loved the character relationships. Also there are enough twists in the novel that I wasn’t always sure how it was going to end.
All I know is that I wish there were more novels about Mischa and her subsequent adventures.
Check out me other reviews at https://thecaptainsquartersblog.wordp...
This novel was her first and is a sci-fi published in 1975. It was rather annoying to get a hold of because it seems to be out of print. But I persevered and read it. Despite some silly seeming scientific facts, it certainly was enjoyable and worth the effort.
Side note: Apparently ye can now buy many of her works in e-book form directly from her website!
The story concerns a telepathic girl named Mischa who lives in the last surviving city on Earth. Being telepathic is not something that makes Mischa’s life easy and being discovered could easily led to her death. In fact, the author’s take on telepathy in this novel was wonderful. It can be useful tool but overall is primarily horrible for Mischa. I am used to the version of telepathy in more recent novels that are seemingly effortless.
The city’s political and social structures were the highlights for me. Slavery is a big theme in this novel but even the top citizens of the world seem to be stuck in a less than stellar environment. Mischa of course is the plucky orphan who is trying to escape Earth. Her goal is to get on a ship to take her and her sick, useless, but beloved brother to a new life.
Plots are failing and Mischa’s options look bleaker than ever. When a ship lands on Earth during an off season time period and these twin brothers/clones take over the Earth, she might have one last shot at success.
With mutants, magic, clones, underground chases, excellent side characters, and thievery to boot, this novel had a cleverly setup premise and plot. The execution left a little something to be desired in the middle of the book due to the chase scene that could have been shorter, but I loved the character relationships. Also there are enough twists in the novel that I wasn’t always sure how it was going to end.
All I know is that I wish there were more novels about Mischa and her subsequent adventures.
Check out me other reviews at https://thecaptainsquartersblog.wordp...
February 25, 2020
A girl struggles to escape her life in the underground city which one of the last habitable places on Earth. This is a very loose companion to Dreamsnake--shared universe, different setting, no particular relation. Where the books overlap and differ is an unfair comparison because Dreamsnake is so very good, but it's also telling: They share a similar approach to worldbuilding, backgrounding it into a mystery that's revealed over the course of the plot, which I love. They're both crapsack settings and both have an eye towards reform, but where the solutions in Dreamsnake are flawed, local, cathartic things tightly tied to the protagonist's journey, the cast in The Exile Waiting aren't able to change the world and struggle just to change themselves--which makes the larger solutions feel disjointed and borderline unearned. But the characters in both books are great, and two here have conflicts which are closely tied to speculative/worldbuilding elements, which is one of my favorite things in SF. I can see the potential in Exile that lead to Dreamsnake, and I'm glad I finally read it, but I would say I'm more fond that impressed--it doesn't coalesce.
November 4, 2025
Pretty solid, I think the ambience and characterization deserves a lot of credit. The plot sorta just "happens" for the first 60% and I take issue with the optimism of the ending.
May 10, 2025
while it suffers from awkward pacing at times and a protagonist who is often a little too precocious (sci-fi authors, please stop doing this), the story is engaging and the backdrop of the world is unique.
March 9, 2020
The Exile Waiting by Vonda N. McIntyre
Like many good books, I think The Exile Waiting can be read on different levels. If I was still in my teens, I would probably feel that it is simply an engaging post-apocalyptic adventure story. More mature readers, though, will likely identify the complex web of dysfunctional and tragic relationships as what stands out most clearly. And it is these relationships which power much of the story.
The Exile Waiting (1975) is set in the same world as Dreamsnake (1978), but cannot really be considered a prequel. The characters are all different and the stories are unrelated, although there are points of convergence. In Dreamsnake, the people who have to fend for themselves in the outside world seem to imagine the inhabitants of Center (an enclosed enclave, and supposedly the last bastion of civilization remaining after a global nuclear war) as enjoying a high standard of living and technology, but in The Exile Waiting we see that in some ways they suffer more than their outdoor counterparts. In Dreamsnake, tunnels behind certain desert caves in which cave panthers dwell are thought to lead into Center, and these dark galleries beneath the city are the focus for some of the most important events in The Exile Waiting. Similar to Dreamsnake, this novel also features a strong female lead character, in this case a determined young girl named Mischa.
The overarching theme of the book seems to be how people react and behave under various forms of slavery. Some of the characters are bound in physical slavery, and some are controlled by manipulative individuals or by their own fears and vices. One is dependent on a certain kind of drug. Prejudice and mistreatment due to perceived differences or disabilities is another theme, and Mischa has to conceal carefully the way in which she is different from the others around her. Eventually, many of those who on the surface appear strongest prove to be weak, and those considered the weakest triumph through their reserves of inner strength and their willingness to learn and adapt.
The above description probably sounds somewhat grim and depressing, but I found the novel quite uplifting. Other reviewers have identified certain details they see as weaknesses in the plot, but I did not even notice these and they did not affect my enjoyment in any way. I think this work is at least as good as Dreamsnake, although I would not like to choose between the two books. After finishing The Exile Waiting, the reader can also ponder on the meaning of the title.
Like many good books, I think The Exile Waiting can be read on different levels. If I was still in my teens, I would probably feel that it is simply an engaging post-apocalyptic adventure story. More mature readers, though, will likely identify the complex web of dysfunctional and tragic relationships as what stands out most clearly. And it is these relationships which power much of the story.
The Exile Waiting (1975) is set in the same world as Dreamsnake (1978), but cannot really be considered a prequel. The characters are all different and the stories are unrelated, although there are points of convergence. In Dreamsnake, the people who have to fend for themselves in the outside world seem to imagine the inhabitants of Center (an enclosed enclave, and supposedly the last bastion of civilization remaining after a global nuclear war) as enjoying a high standard of living and technology, but in The Exile Waiting we see that in some ways they suffer more than their outdoor counterparts. In Dreamsnake, tunnels behind certain desert caves in which cave panthers dwell are thought to lead into Center, and these dark galleries beneath the city are the focus for some of the most important events in The Exile Waiting. Similar to Dreamsnake, this novel also features a strong female lead character, in this case a determined young girl named Mischa.
The overarching theme of the book seems to be how people react and behave under various forms of slavery. Some of the characters are bound in physical slavery, and some are controlled by manipulative individuals or by their own fears and vices. One is dependent on a certain kind of drug. Prejudice and mistreatment due to perceived differences or disabilities is another theme, and Mischa has to conceal carefully the way in which she is different from the others around her. Eventually, many of those who on the surface appear strongest prove to be weak, and those considered the weakest triumph through their reserves of inner strength and their willingness to learn and adapt.
The above description probably sounds somewhat grim and depressing, but I found the novel quite uplifting. Other reviewers have identified certain details they see as weaknesses in the plot, but I did not even notice these and they did not affect my enjoyment in any way. I think this work is at least as good as Dreamsnake, although I would not like to choose between the two books. After finishing The Exile Waiting, the reader can also ponder on the meaning of the title.
August 1, 2015
Light-tubes spread across the ceiling like the gills of a mushroom. The instantaneous impression was one of chaos, of tiny gray projections climbing each other to reach the ceiling, spotted here and there with color or movement. Mischa knew the city well enough to see the underlying order: five parallel spiral ramps leading up the walls at a low pitch, giving access to the stacked dwellings. The helices were almost obliterated by years of building-over, use, and neglect. The walls of the cavern, crowded with single-unit box-houses piled against the stone, looked like shattered honeycombs. To Mischa's left, and below her, Stone Palace was an empty blotch of bare gray rock on the mural of disorder. Its two entrances were closed to the rest of the city; before it, the Circle, the wide sandy way that led around the perimeter of the cave, was almost deserted.
It's unlike me to wish that books were longer, as I normally like the older shorter sf books like this one, but in this case I could have done with more information about how Center actually worked. Blaisse tells SubOne and SubTwo that he only rules Center in alliance with the Families, but we never find out the any of the Families think about the agreement he makes with the aliens, and it was never explained exactly why , although this is because the point of view characters don't know these things. I would also like to have see more about Mischa's relationship with her Uncle and any other family members.
All in all, it just doesn't hang together as well as Dreamsnake.
It's unlike me to wish that books were longer, as I normally like the older shorter sf books like this one, but in this case I could have done with more information about how Center actually worked. Blaisse tells SubOne and SubTwo that he only rules Center in alliance with the Families, but we never find out the any of the Families think about the agreement he makes with the aliens, and it was never explained exactly why , although this is because the point of view characters don't know these things. I would also like to have see more about Mischa's relationship with her Uncle and any other family members.
All in all, it just doesn't hang together as well as Dreamsnake.
September 5, 2014
It's a pretty good pulpy action story. I mean, it had me the moment they introduced a male love slave -- pity we didn't get more of him on camera. :D
*cough*
There were a few points that bothered me - overly repetitious sections, the fact that the main character is motivated by a dying addict brother who conveniently dies as soon as that motivation is no longer needed. The bad guys are all purely despicable. The good guys are all woefully tormented. The main character is astoundingly competent at everything and the only person in her radiated underground home whose mutations are wholly useful and non-disfiguring. (In a word, she's a bit of a Mary Sue.)
Still, as mindless entertainment goes, I liked it well enough to read to the end, eager and anxious that Madame should make it onto the ship outta town.
*cough*
There were a few points that bothered me - overly repetitious sections, the fact that the main character is motivated by a dying addict brother who conveniently dies as soon as that motivation is no longer needed. The bad guys are all purely despicable. The good guys are all woefully tormented. The main character is astoundingly competent at everything and the only person in her radiated underground home whose mutations are wholly useful and non-disfiguring. (In a word, she's a bit of a Mary Sue.)
Still, as mindless entertainment goes, I liked it well enough to read to the end, eager and anxious that Madame should make it onto the ship outta town.
September 12, 2016
Disorienting and blurry, the subterranean world of Vonda McIntyre’s The Exile Waiting (1975) hosts a confusion of social structures that aren’t easily deciphered. The first few chapters are especially complicated as the first act winds its way through a series of tunnels and bends and broken thoughts as Mischa resists Gemmi’s empathic tugs, rescues a self-destructive Chris, and observes the so-called normalcy of this alien place called Center. Disjointed journal excerpts by an outsider named Jan intensify the narrative haze. Gender deconstruction details, such as ambiguous names and delayed use of gendered pronouns while casting women in typically male-dominated occupations add another appreciation element to the tale.
July 22, 2022
An underground city ruled by a decadent elite, the mass of people paupers and thieves in basically a condition of serfdom, and among them are the mutants, people with special powers that the populace shuns and the elites imprison. On an earth blasted by ecological disaster. Must be a 70s scif story, right?
Right.
I love 70s scifi, with its over-the-top apocalyptic envirodisaster craphead humans needing the benevolent guidance of Marxist aliens to teach us a better way. Back then, it was global cooling and a worldwide nuclear war that was going to bring about our much-deserved demise. But, since that didn’t happen, it’s now global warming and a really bad cold that’ll do it. A whimper as opposed to a bang, I guess.
This was Vonda McIntyre’s first novel, the one in which she created the world of Center and Sphere, which is the setting for her later novel Dreamsnake, which won both the Hugo and Nebula in 1978. She is one of the women scifi writers who give evidence against the so-called boys’ club white patriarchy scifi community of the time, along with Ursula K. Leguin, Madeline L’Engele, James Tiptree…yes JAMES Tiptree, Octavia Butler, others. And let’s be a little straight up here: it isn’t that scifi was all white male exclusionary oppressors, it’s that scifi was considered trashy, kid’s stuff, unserious. Pretty much through the 80s. What self-respecting woman wants to be identified with that? Catherine Moore hid her name as C L Moore because she didn’t want her boss to find out she wrote scifi.
On an earth ravaged by winter-long sandstorms caused by a nuclear war hundreds of years before, Center is a city stretching across several caverns beneath the surface, surviving off trade with distant tribes that visit during the quiet summer months, and with offworld human communities that occasionally drop by. Center is run by the Families, a generations-long inbred group of degenerate pseudo-kings and queens who hold absolute power and have enslaved the rest of the population.
Mischa and her brother Chris are thieves, trained by their uncle and in thrall to him to provide a certain amount of stolen goods every week or he’ll sell their mentally crippled sister, Gemi, to the beggars, who will mutilate her to make her a more pathetic figure. Mischa is very good at her job, primarily because she is a mutant with telepathic abilities, giving her quite the edge when breaking into places. It also keeps her in danger. If the Families find out about her abilities, she’ll be burned at the stake or banished to the endless black tunnels underneath the city, where other mutants have formed clans.
Into this medieval society comes two of the most fascinating characters in all of scifi- SubOne and SubTwo, experimental twin brothers who are the coldest, ruthless, most endearing space pirates you’ll come across. I actually started rooting for them. They land on Earth in the middle of a winter sandstorm, which is completely unheard of, and walk in and take over Center, putting the Families under their rule. And then SubOne finds Mischa, who is a polymath as well as a telepath, and takes an interest in her education.
And at this point it looked like we had a fairly good progression going: Mischa, the much abused and hopeless teenage girl, can glimpse a future for her and Chris and maybe Gemi. But, then, seemingly out of nowhere, there is an incident between Chris and SubTwo that turns them into enemies and puts Mischa on the run through the underground tunnels. And it feels so much like a plot device that I wondered what the heck is this? I’m all for plot twists that change a novel’s direction, but this seemed unnecessary. I’m not sure why McIntyre did it because everything ends up in the same place I thought it was going, anyway.
Oh well.
This is an alright read, nothing to write home about, but a pretty good sampling of what 70s scifi is all about. Especially if you’re a little tired of Clarke and Asimov. But don’t expect something a whole lot different than what they wrote. After all, tropes is tropes.
Right.
I love 70s scifi, with its over-the-top apocalyptic envirodisaster craphead humans needing the benevolent guidance of Marxist aliens to teach us a better way. Back then, it was global cooling and a worldwide nuclear war that was going to bring about our much-deserved demise. But, since that didn’t happen, it’s now global warming and a really bad cold that’ll do it. A whimper as opposed to a bang, I guess.
This was Vonda McIntyre’s first novel, the one in which she created the world of Center and Sphere, which is the setting for her later novel Dreamsnake, which won both the Hugo and Nebula in 1978. She is one of the women scifi writers who give evidence against the so-called boys’ club white patriarchy scifi community of the time, along with Ursula K. Leguin, Madeline L’Engele, James Tiptree…yes JAMES Tiptree, Octavia Butler, others. And let’s be a little straight up here: it isn’t that scifi was all white male exclusionary oppressors, it’s that scifi was considered trashy, kid’s stuff, unserious. Pretty much through the 80s. What self-respecting woman wants to be identified with that? Catherine Moore hid her name as C L Moore because she didn’t want her boss to find out she wrote scifi.
On an earth ravaged by winter-long sandstorms caused by a nuclear war hundreds of years before, Center is a city stretching across several caverns beneath the surface, surviving off trade with distant tribes that visit during the quiet summer months, and with offworld human communities that occasionally drop by. Center is run by the Families, a generations-long inbred group of degenerate pseudo-kings and queens who hold absolute power and have enslaved the rest of the population.
Mischa and her brother Chris are thieves, trained by their uncle and in thrall to him to provide a certain amount of stolen goods every week or he’ll sell their mentally crippled sister, Gemi, to the beggars, who will mutilate her to make her a more pathetic figure. Mischa is very good at her job, primarily because she is a mutant with telepathic abilities, giving her quite the edge when breaking into places. It also keeps her in danger. If the Families find out about her abilities, she’ll be burned at the stake or banished to the endless black tunnels underneath the city, where other mutants have formed clans.
Into this medieval society comes two of the most fascinating characters in all of scifi- SubOne and SubTwo, experimental twin brothers who are the coldest, ruthless, most endearing space pirates you’ll come across. I actually started rooting for them. They land on Earth in the middle of a winter sandstorm, which is completely unheard of, and walk in and take over Center, putting the Families under their rule. And then SubOne finds Mischa, who is a polymath as well as a telepath, and takes an interest in her education.
And at this point it looked like we had a fairly good progression going: Mischa, the much abused and hopeless teenage girl, can glimpse a future for her and Chris and maybe Gemi. But, then, seemingly out of nowhere, there is an incident between Chris and SubTwo that turns them into enemies and puts Mischa on the run through the underground tunnels. And it feels so much like a plot device that I wondered what the heck is this? I’m all for plot twists that change a novel’s direction, but this seemed unnecessary. I’m not sure why McIntyre did it because everything ends up in the same place I thought it was going, anyway.
Oh well.
This is an alright read, nothing to write home about, but a pretty good sampling of what 70s scifi is all about. Especially if you’re a little tired of Clarke and Asimov. But don’t expect something a whole lot different than what they wrote. After all, tropes is tropes.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 12, 2018
This one was originally published in 1975, and the copy I own is the 1985 reprint, bought off a sale table in the mall. It's been on the shelf for over three decades (!) but only in very recent years have I had the chance to read again. (I'm currently devouring over a hundred thousand words a week ... after years of not having the time to read more than a page or two on a little ebook reader, usually jolting around on the bus to and from work.)
What a marvelous storyline The Exile Waiting promised. It was filled with potential and started out extremely well. What happened next is a puzzler. After having read several of McIntyre's books in the past (admittedly, her Star Trek titles) I guess I expected more, either from this writer or this novel. Spider Robinson said of it (quoted from the cover matter), "A cracking good yarn with a very real cast..." And Joanna Russ called it "...one of the most vivid and real science fiction words I've seen..." Hmm.
Such hyperbole gave me high expectations which, in turn, left me scratching the head. The inescapable fact is -- great plotline and fantastic potential or no, the novel is so underwritten and abbreviated, the story barely survives ... and the characters don't. It's a quick read, at about 100k words in 248pp, and many of the characters are little more than a name and a cursory physical description. This will work for background filler characters, but when some of your main characters are still close to mysteries when the story ends, the reader is left sadly unfulfilled. The action unfolds in fits and starts, sometimes lovingly detailed (in absolutely gorgeous prose), other times "dashed off" with pivotal sequences told in retrospect, and in shorthand. The overall effect is ... lumpy.
Since I'm asked to award stars, I'd give The Exile Waiting three, because the world it builds is refreshingly strange, a couple of the characters are oddly compelling, and from time to time the prose is nothing short of luminous. I wanted to love this book, because I know McIntyre's other work quite well; but this one is uncomfortably like a third draft awaiting revision and polishing. It was her first published novel, so I guess it's safe to say everyone has to start somewhere!
What a marvelous storyline The Exile Waiting promised. It was filled with potential and started out extremely well. What happened next is a puzzler. After having read several of McIntyre's books in the past (admittedly, her Star Trek titles) I guess I expected more, either from this writer or this novel. Spider Robinson said of it (quoted from the cover matter), "A cracking good yarn with a very real cast..." And Joanna Russ called it "...one of the most vivid and real science fiction words I've seen..." Hmm.
Such hyperbole gave me high expectations which, in turn, left me scratching the head. The inescapable fact is -- great plotline and fantastic potential or no, the novel is so underwritten and abbreviated, the story barely survives ... and the characters don't. It's a quick read, at about 100k words in 248pp, and many of the characters are little more than a name and a cursory physical description. This will work for background filler characters, but when some of your main characters are still close to mysteries when the story ends, the reader is left sadly unfulfilled. The action unfolds in fits and starts, sometimes lovingly detailed (in absolutely gorgeous prose), other times "dashed off" with pivotal sequences told in retrospect, and in shorthand. The overall effect is ... lumpy.
Since I'm asked to award stars, I'd give The Exile Waiting three, because the world it builds is refreshingly strange, a couple of the characters are oddly compelling, and from time to time the prose is nothing short of luminous. I wanted to love this book, because I know McIntyre's other work quite well; but this one is uncomfortably like a third draft awaiting revision and polishing. It was her first published novel, so I guess it's safe to say everyone has to start somewhere!
June 1, 2021
3.5 stars. A dark dystopian mixed with an action sci-fi plot. I really enjoyed the three main characters the book focused on, Mischa, Jan and SubTwo. The world was interesting, but somewhat disturbing, in a classic sci-fi way. I would say a couple of drawbacks of the book is that at points it doesn't give the characters enough space to breath, like some pretty major stuff happens and the characters have to go on to the next thing without much time to process, and I wish we had seen a little more of the aftermath, especially in the later half of the novel. The other thing is, I wish there had been a little more world-building, there were parts of Center I would have wanted to know about, secondary characters that I wanted to know better, but perhaps the fact I wanted more is a good sign. Lastly, some of the language is a little dated, it was written in the 1970s, so be aware that the author uses some descriptors that writers probably wouldn't use today.
**Spoilers**
One thing that did bother me was SubTwo automatically believing SubOne after the incident surrounding Chris' death, like previously it is mentioned that he is aware that SubOne lies, and kills without much provocation, and his was always willing to hear others out, so the fact he sides immediately with SubOne didn't feel right to his character, and more like it was necessary for the plot in order for him to do so.
**Spoilers**
One thing that did bother me was SubTwo automatically believing SubOne after the incident surrounding Chris' death, like previously it is mentioned that he is aware that SubOne lies, and kills without much provocation, and his was always willing to hear others out, so the fact he sides immediately with SubOne didn't feel right to his character, and more like it was necessary for the plot in order for him to do so.
July 9, 2019
I was recently gifted four Vonda McIntyre books by someone who had been acquainted with her; this was the first chronologically, so I started here. This one wasn't the sort of book I'd choose on my own, with tones that felt pulpy, slightly YA (I wouldn't classify it as YA, for some of the content). It may be unfair to compare a book from 1975 to my modern favorites, though! It was a short read and still entertaining, so I'm more than willing to read through the other three books.
This story is a good ol' fashioned sci-fi adventure, set on a post-post-apocalyptic, dystopian Earth. There are some very minor hints of early cyberpunk elements. It's brief at just over 250 pages and felt like it could have benefited from either more space to devote to everything it touched on, or some paring down. It had a lot of potential, but never quite stirred a "sensawunda," nor satisfactorily covered some of its philosophical points. I didn't care for how some of the ideas about disability and slavery were handled. Juxtapositions between disability and special abilities, and between slavery and free will/personal responsibility felt deeply uncomfortable and careless. Not certain how much, if any of the main issues the later revised edition addressed.
This story is a good ol' fashioned sci-fi adventure, set on a post-post-apocalyptic, dystopian Earth. There are some very minor hints of early cyberpunk elements. It's brief at just over 250 pages and felt like it could have benefited from either more space to devote to everything it touched on, or some paring down. It had a lot of potential, but never quite stirred a "sensawunda," nor satisfactorily covered some of its philosophical points. I didn't care for how some of the ideas about disability and slavery were handled. Juxtapositions between disability and special abilities, and between slavery and free will/personal responsibility felt deeply uncomfortable and careless. Not certain how much, if any of the main issues the later revised edition addressed.
July 4, 2020
This is the third book I read by this author, and loved it as much as I did the other ones (Dreamsnake and The Moon and the Sun).
The writing is perfect, the characters are credible and endearing, the story is great. What I particularly appreciated, and is so rare nowadays is, if a large part of the context is really harsh - poverty, slavery and disabled persons banishment - the main tonality is never unbearable and the ending positive.
What surprised me, a lot, was the modernity of it all. Usually I struggle with old SF works, so easily obsolete and so frequently insufferable for their machismo. But there, but for the cover of my copy (which is sooo démodée :D) I could have believe the book wrote these years. A shame that it never have been translated in French...
I'll soon read her other personal books, bought as ebooks on Book View Cafe!
The writing is perfect, the characters are credible and endearing, the story is great. What I particularly appreciated, and is so rare nowadays is, if a large part of the context is really harsh - poverty, slavery and disabled persons banishment - the main tonality is never unbearable and the ending positive.
What surprised me, a lot, was the modernity of it all. Usually I struggle with old SF works, so easily obsolete and so frequently insufferable for their machismo. But there, but for the cover of my copy (which is sooo démodée :D) I could have believe the book wrote these years. A shame that it never have been translated in French...
I'll soon read her other personal books, bought as ebooks on Book View Cafe!
October 8, 2020
This was McIntyre's first novel, published in 1975 when she was 26. It shows a deft hand at understanding and subverting the tropes of classic science fiction. The principal characters are all damaged in some way, both physically and psychologically, and must find their way out of their confinement (literal and metaphorical) to achieve a sense of agency.
The book includes some standard elements from that time period (interest in telepathy or other 'psionic' powers, and nuclear war). However, the book is notable for its treatment of women and non-gendered characters, and also the aforementioned damage which can be read as commentary on disability issues (an essay at the end makes this plain).
It's pretty well written for a first novel, although it feels a little dated today; these issues are no longer as new to SF as they were then. As a pioneering novel of the development of feminist thinking into SF, it's interesting.
The book includes some standard elements from that time period (interest in telepathy or other 'psionic' powers, and nuclear war). However, the book is notable for its treatment of women and non-gendered characters, and also the aforementioned damage which can be read as commentary on disability issues (an essay at the end makes this plain).
It's pretty well written for a first novel, although it feels a little dated today; these issues are no longer as new to SF as they were then. As a pioneering novel of the development of feminist thinking into SF, it's interesting.
May 21, 2022
A wonderful little gem 💎😊
The world is immersive and an interesting backdrop for the plot. The villains are ... villains ... and the other main characters are very likable. This is classical SciFi without misogyny, racism, child sex (looking at you, Frederik Pohl 🤨). Well, not without, but McIntyre depicts these atrocities as what they are: unethical, immoral, unacceptable, something to fight against, ...
I read this book as a teenager and still remember the escape through the caves vividly. Having re-read the book as an adult, it hasn't lost any of its magic.
Although the story is nothing grand, it is interesting and captivating from the very beginning. Not the galaxy or the universe itself are at stake, as in many other books, but the fate of an oppressed people. And we don't get a final conclusion either. Instead, the reader gets a glimpse into a possible future, which is very satisfying in itself.
The world is immersive and an interesting backdrop for the plot. The villains are ... villains ... and the other main characters are very likable. This is classical SciFi without misogyny, racism, child sex (looking at you, Frederik Pohl 🤨). Well, not without, but McIntyre depicts these atrocities as what they are: unethical, immoral, unacceptable, something to fight against, ...
I read this book as a teenager and still remember the escape through the caves vividly. Having re-read the book as an adult, it hasn't lost any of its magic.
Although the story is nothing grand, it is interesting and captivating from the very beginning. Not the galaxy or the universe itself are at stake, as in many other books, but the fate of an oppressed people. And we don't get a final conclusion either. Instead, the reader gets a glimpse into a possible future, which is very satisfying in itself.
December 10, 2022
I only just bought a used copy of this, under the UK Grafton imprint, in an Oxfam Books charity shop. I read Vonda's short story 'Of Mist, And Grass, And Sand' in an anthology many years ago and then the novel 'Dreamsnake'. Dreamsnake referenced Center also but was written after The Exile Waiting.
The Exile Waiting was Vonda's first novel and the writing is a little disjointed, with some jump cuts here and there, which confuses the reader. I found the first half of the book quite tedious and there were too many characters but it picks up in the second half, when Mischa and Jan escape into the tunnels and unexplored reaches of the underground community.
Overall, a fairly intriguing work, though another pass at the material would have improved the somewhat jumbled narrative.
The Exile Waiting was Vonda's first novel and the writing is a little disjointed, with some jump cuts here and there, which confuses the reader. I found the first half of the book quite tedious and there were too many characters but it picks up in the second half, when Mischa and Jan escape into the tunnels and unexplored reaches of the underground community.
Overall, a fairly intriguing work, though another pass at the material would have improved the somewhat jumbled narrative.
November 4, 2018
I think this is the most interesting book I've read this year, absolutely fascinating. Written in the 1970s by the brilliant Vonda N McIntyre before she wrote the amazing novel Dreamsnake. It has such an interesting and unique setup and some absolutely bizarre characters who nevertheless fit well into the story and are integral to it.
It reads a bit like a dream or a trip on mushrooms, the intricate detail of some of the world building and the blurred fuzziness of other parts make it quite difficult to grasp, but this doesn't matter as the whole thing hangs together well. Love it!
It reads a bit like a dream or a trip on mushrooms, the intricate detail of some of the world building and the blurred fuzziness of other parts make it quite difficult to grasp, but this doesn't matter as the whole thing hangs together well. Love it!
April 9, 2024
I don’t really know what to say about this book other than that I enjoyed it. The setting and ideas were unique and fun. The story was good and I really enjoyed the dynamics between certain characters, especially those involving Subtwo.
My favorite part of the book would probably just be how the author writes. Descriptions and the way things are portrayed are very interesting and enjoyable.
It wasn’t a book that blew my mind or anything but there wasn’t anything I didn’t enjoy either, so 4/5.
My favorite part of the book would probably just be how the author writes. Descriptions and the way things are portrayed are very interesting and enjoyable.
It wasn’t a book that blew my mind or anything but there wasn’t anything I didn’t enjoy either, so 4/5.
August 6, 2021
I was astonished to discover when this book was published, considering that its way of addressing a lot of issues seems so pertinent. The science of space travel is safely vague enough that it did not age poorly, either.
March 16, 2022
Alas, I have never met anyone in real life resident this book which is a pity because it's very entertaining and thought-provoking.
Note that although this is that in the same world as her other book, Dreamsnake, it's not very similar at all.
P.S. I love Jan Hikaru.
Note that although this is that in the same world as her other book, Dreamsnake, it's not very similar at all.
P.S. I love Jan Hikaru.
October 20, 2022
A post-apocalyptic coming-of-age novel that's fairly entertaining, even when some of the exploratory action sections meander. The world where the plot occurs is fairly self-contained, though hints of the wider world are sprinkled throughout to provide some possibility for future development
February 8, 2023
this was really moving and perturbing and rich. politically, thematically ambivalent—much to think about—feeling sort of vulnerable and claustrophobic and thirsty upon finishing it. my feminist sci-fi journey begins :)
March 1, 2024
I read this for a class and thought it was pretty cool. Not my favorite SF ever or anything, but a really cool world that had some interesting urban spaces and a nice way of describing the subterranean.
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