Motherlines

Holdfast Chronicles #2

by Suzy McKee Charnas

Several years ago, Suzy McKee Charnas impressed the SF world with her first novel, Walk to the End of the World, a story of the far future—when survivors of a nuclear holocaust have formed a feudal enclave in which women are enslaved animals. Now, in Motherlines, Charnas moves to another geographic location in the same future world and chronicles the adventures of Alldera, the escaped slave, among the plains-dwelling women of the motherline tribes.

In one of the most striking and innovative leaps of the SF imagination ever, Charnas envisions a society of nomadic women who reproduce parthenogenetically, the descendants of pre-holocaust experimental subject. During the generations since the disaster, these women on horseback have developed a culture that is entirely new to the face of the Earth.

Alldera, in her escape from the Holdfast, survives a terrible trek over the mountain ranges to the central plains, in search of the legendary community of escaped fems (slaves). More dead than alive, in advanced pregnancy, Alldera is discovered by sentries of the motherline tribes. They take her to their camp and restore her to health for her delivery. The motherline tribes know the community of “free fems,” which she seeks and after the baby is born they force Alldera to choose to live with that community.

But Alldera finds that the “free fems” are just as hidebound and feudal as the Holdfast. She is really in the same situation she originally fled from, so she must leave the community. She wanders for a time with her friend, Daya, and then both return to live among the motherline tribes as tolerated foreigners.

Charnas provides, through the story of Alldera’s wanderings, an intense and moving examination of two different future societies, two life-styles developed in extreme and telling detail.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Feminism, Science Fiction Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Queer

273 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Suzy McKee Charnas, a native New Yorker raised and educated in Manhattan, surfaced as an author with WALK TO THE END OF THE WORLD (1974), a no-punches-pulled feminist SF novel and Campbell award finalist. The three further books that sprang from WALK (comprising a futurist, feminist epic about how people make history and create myth) closed in 1999 with THE CONQUEROR’S CHILD, a Tiptree winner (as is the series in its entirety).

Meanwhile, she taught for two years in Nigeria with the Peace Corps, married, and moved to New Mexico, where she has lived, taught, and written fiction and non-fiction for forty five years. She teaches SF from time to time, and travels every year to genre conventions around the country and (occasionally) around the world.

Her varied SF and fantasy works have also won the Hugo award, the Nebula award, the Gigamesh Award (Spain), and the Mythopoeic award for Young-Adult fantasy. A play based on her novel THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY has been staged on both coasts. STAGESTRUCK VAMPIRES (Tachyon Books) collects her best short fiction, plus essays on writing feminist SF and on seeing her play script first become a professionally staged drama in San Francisco. Currently, she’s working at getting all of her work out in e-book, audio, and other formats, and moving several decades’ worth of manuscripts, correspondence, etc. out of a slightly leaky garage and sent off to be archived at the University of Oregon Special Collections. She has two cats and a gentleman boarder (also a cat), good friends and colleagues, ideas for new work, and travel plans for the future.

Reviews

[Ruxandra Grrr · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me a month and a half to finish this, but honestly, the past week I didn't want it to end. It absolutely murdered me, not with an obvious tragedy at the end, but with just the beauty of having a bunch of hardened women with their own different softnesses interacting with each other and feeling. It's so hard to explain.

This book is an uncomfortable and honest culture clash between two-ish factions: the free women riders, all non-monogamous and lesbians (<3 <3) and the fems (also all lesbians, lol, there is literally not a man in sight in this one), who have all escaped from slavery at the hands of men over the years and are dealing with the damage of having lived under a fucking horrible patriarchy. They are all uncomfortable (what some might call unlikeable, I guess?) and they interact with each other uncomfortably and the friction is tense and sad and also gorgeous in the way it's handled.

Not exactly a main character, but an antagonist, Sheel's chapter at the end devastated me - once again, not because of some tragedy, but because of her growth. Her thinking, with sadness, that she has lost her hate for a person and a type of change, and that was poignant to the max.

But damn, I loved all of these characters and McKee Charnas's writing of them, in their friction, their sorrow, their ability to discover things about themselves and each other, their wisdom, their preconceptions, their everything. Alldera's plight broke my heart and then put it back together again. Her romantic partner, Nenisi (probably suffering from some autoimmune disease) was great, and at the same time, the development of her other partnership, with Daya, was one of the most satisfying things I've read this year. I loved Sheel, so hardened and annoying, but I loved her, Fedeka, Baravan also great.

And I loved how McKee Charnas kept Sorrel away from us until the final chapters of the book. Great structuring with excellent thematic underpinnings. The way she handled Alldera's bloodmotherhood was all incredibly well done, especially since Alldera did not consent to her pregnancy, and Charnas didn't then build her whole story around said motherhood. Extremely my shit, damn.

Until I fucking write my stupid fantasy novel that I've been working on for almost 8 years, I won't be able to explain to anyone why I feel like the DNA of this series is related to the DNA of that particular book (and not necessarily my writing in general). And how seen I feel in this book and style and themes. It's almost impossible to believe that this exists and it's so heartening.

I have two books left and I'm almost afraid to read them, lol, the stakes feel so high! But I have so much faith in McKee Charnas!!

[Pam Baddeley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the sequel to Walk to the End of the World, but is a very different book in approach and structure. Whereas the first book is clearly divided into different viewpoints - mainly of male characters - this is more organically told from different women's POVs, including Alldera, the woman from the first volume.

At the end of the first volume, Alldera escaped from the nightmare of the Holdfast in the middle of a civil war. As this volume opens she is wandering the forbidding country beyond. She is pregnant from having to 'service' her various masters, and this imperils her already precarious survival. But strange footprints lead her to a food cache. In the hope of catching up with the monsters who made the tracks, before the food runs out, she follows and finds monsters indeed - with two heads: one human. Only at the last moment does she realise they are human beings riding animals (for there were no animals in the Holdfast, not even domestic ones), and that the 'men' riding them, who she anticipates will kill her, are actually women.

These Riding Women take her into their community and nurse her so that her child is born healthy. They are the descendants of women who were genetically engineered to have a double set of DNA in their ova, for reasons that don't entirely make sense, but possibly were intended to create a set of well understood experimental subjects with little genetic drift. The scientists who worked on their development ensured that they can conceive - parthenogenesis, found in nature in species such as the aphid - by their ova being triggered into dividing and eventually becoming clones of themselves. Implausibly, those scientists ensured this could be done only in the presence of horse semen, which leads to an 'inevitable' conclusion and a 'sex with horse ceremony' scene where the young women are 'mated' with young colts while lying in a contraption to hopefully allow them to survive the experience. A lot of readers might find this risible or repulsive. It certainly wasn't the only method that could have been employed, but is part of the ambivalent bond that the women have with their horses. Ambivalent, because the women also routinely kill their horses for meat.

The various tribes of women consists of an extended web of connections, with identical mothers and daughters of different ages spread out between the tribes. They depend on their horses which they have bred for toughness, especially the mares, and live in harmony with the environment. Crucially however, this is no paradise: apart from the raiding between groups which sometimes lead to deaths or injuries, and the predations of a vicious creature which sounds like a genetically engineered rat, there are tensions among the women, sometimes resulting in feuds where they injure or kill each other. However, to some extent, they make allowances for their mutual flaws as they know the traits of each 'Motherline'. In a sense, everyone is predictable, which is not the case with Alldera or the 'free fems' a population of escaped fems from the Holdfast who trade with the women and live in an uneasy accord with them. Alldera had always believed the 'free fems' to be a myth. Her original mission in the Holdfast had been to escape and find them to ask for their help in freeing their fellow captives, but by the time she does meet them, she discovers that they are full of talk rather than practical help.

The main hardship of Riding Woman existence is that when the grass wears thin due to the rains coming late, they have to slaughter horses, and Alldera witnesses this in a graphic scene. This notion leads to a rather silly scene when a wild mare she has tamed is killed: although the women don't truly understand the genetic basis of their creation, surely they would realise it would be better to breed from this mare to introduce some needed variation into their herds? Anyway, this aspect will probably put some readers off.

Alldera finds it hard to fit into such a close knit community where only her daughter will be truly accepted - because the sharemothers - the group of women who 'adopted' them both - have all breastfed the child in the hope she will somehow develop their trait. The sharemothers care for the baby, while Alldera remains ambivalent: she had had two daughters in the Holdfast but both had been taken from her as usual and left to fend for themselves in the 'kit pit' so she has never been in daily contact with a child. Among the Riding Women, once children can run about they raise themselves in a 'child pack', so her daughter disappears into the group of wild children soon enough, only to emerge at puberty.

Alldera eventually leaves to join the 'free fems'. To her disappointment, she discovers they have not matured mentally or emotionally from the enforced infantile behaviour of their previous existence. All the fems kowtow to one individual in particular, and Alldera is disgusted by their petty jealousy, pilfering and sometimes vicious rivalries, finding herself an outcast here too. Their talk of returning to the Holdfast to overcome any male survivors and to free any surviving fems is just futile talk. She draws their hostility by running by herself and staying out of their feuds, and also because she didn't bring her child with her - their numbers are finite and will decrease as they die off, since no fems have escaped from the Holdfast since she did.

Eventually, she makes her way back to the Riding Women after overcoming a crisis of confidence, but by then, other fems have seen the attraction of learning to ride a horse as she does and using weapons, and the dream of returning becomes much more of a reality. By the end of the story, the fems have toughened up and lost most of the traits that beset them. They have won grudging acceptance by the Riding Women and Alldera has become their de facto leader.

The story in this book is much more involved with the characters than in volume one which concentrated on a lot of info dumping about the men's society and how it had arisen. This time there are no chunks of info-dumping. Instead, we gradually learn about the various communities through the personalities of different women and their POVs, and the story is much more involving. Therefore for me it earns a 4-star, with the warning that there are scenes of violence towards animals and also sexual scenes which may upset some readers. As a minor note, the cover of this edition is extremely misleading - at no time do any women lead another woman around by the neck and none of the characters wear clothes the slightest bit like those in the illustration either!

[Kris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely exceeded my expectations from the first book.

[Karley · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm on the fence about this book. Not about how I feel about it - I hated almost every page of it; but what I should do with it, now that I have (FINALLY! PRAISE JESUS!!) finished it. Should I abandon it at a doctor's office waiting room, as I do with all the other books I hate too much to pass on to friends, or do I just throw it in the recycling bin? Does my opinion justify the destruction of this book, or of any book? I certainly don't want anyone to associate me with this book, but they wouldn't if I just left it somewhere... but do I do that to a stranger? Do I put anyone into the position of encountering this book? Because it is a terrible TERRIBLE book.

The copy I have is two books in one. The first, WALK TO THE END OF THE WORLD set the scene for us. The world as we know it has been destroyed. There's little food, and even less hope. Men have blamed women, and have made them into slaves. Men no longer have sex with women, and children are rare. Also, there's something about young men being required to find their fathers (as any father who has has sex with a woman to create a child should be ashamed of himself) and kill them. In the first book, three men go off to find, and kill, one of their fathers. They do this. They meet Alldera, and in the fighting and destruction that ensues in the Holdfast, she escapes.

The second book is MOTHERLINES. Alldera is lost in the desert, searching for the mythical Free Fems (other women, like her, who have escaped Holdfast), and pregnant. She is discovered and captured by a member of The Mares (Women who have never lived in the Holdfast). She is nursed back to health and abandons her girl child to the Mares. She sets off to connect with the Free Fems (who trade with the Mares), spends some time with them, and gets tired of their lifestyle, goes off to live with the medicine woman. Eventually, Daya, of the Free Fems is injured and must also find the medicine woman. The three of them hang out for a couple of months before Alldera runs off to tame wild horses for a couple of months. Eventually, Daya and Alldera become lovers and go back to the Mares because Alldera's child is now old enough to be a woman, and this is an important part of life, to be celebrated and whatnot. The Mares and the Free Fems do eventually learn to live together, and there's a lot of talk about the Free Fems going back to the (certainly now dead) Holdfast and reclaiming it. But the story stops before that actually happens.

Not the worst story, right? What I found offensive (besides the cannibalism of the dead by the Fems in theHoldfast) is the way the reader is supposed to just be okay with BEASTIALITY. The Mares have decided that they can have children because of some cockamemie story about something that happened years ago in some scientific lab. That these women can self-impregnant, but that in order to kick start this ability, they must have sex with horses. I am not okay with that. I am not okay with Alldera abandoning her child to a group of women who will make this child (when she is old enough, or sturdy enough) have sex with a horse - even though she is not from the line of women who were modified at the lab. I am not okay with ANY of the women having sex with a horse. And for this part of the storyline, I am considering destroying this book.

If cannabalism and sex with horses is how to save the human race, maybe it's better to let humans die. There are lines that shouldn't be crossed.... and to think that the author of this book thinks she's a feminist...

[Kirk Macleod · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favourite things about working my way through lists of classic science fiction (or any genre fiction, really) is discovering new authors and stories that lead me beyond the list.

The latest example of this for me was Suzy McKee Charnas' 1974 book, A Walk to the End of the World, which focused on a post-apocalyptic world where society had split along gender lines, which men representing a higher caste in a settlement called the Holdfast, and women becoming a means of labour and necessary breeding.

The second novel in the series, Motherlines (1978), focuses on the main female character from the first book and her life outside of the Holdfast. Like a lot of sequels, I really enjoyed how quickly the novel moves into actual story and character development, as the world-building aspects of the series were largely dealt with in the first novel. Where Motherlines works best is with the two societies of women the main character comes across and how they both strive to exist free of men in a world where science has largely fallen away and children are a highly treasured commodity.

The book was great, I found myself swept along the story of the main characters life and will definitely be picking up the third book in the series The Furies, next month.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book as a teenager. It made quite an impression on me. It was one of my favorite books from that time.

[Bri · Rating 3 out of 5]

This definitely sticks in the memory.

[Tani · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot more than the first book, so it's feels kind of strange giving it the same rating, but it's not quite a five star book for me. It was just a little bit too slow, and although I really enjoyed the experience of reading it, even now, just two days after finishing the book, I can tell that I'm not going to remember a lot of it. It's just not going to stick, which tells me it doesn't qualify for those five stars.

Anyway. This book follows the further adventures of Alldera, as she finds free women and fems in the supposedly unpopulated wilderness, and tries to figure out her place among them. It's a slow book where there's a lot of introspection and learning about different belief systems, and not a lot of action. And yet, it was incredibly readable for me. I did not want to put this book down, which is why I feel it's so close to being a five star read for me. Even though not a lot was happening in concrete terms, a lot was happening in Alldera's heart and soul, and that drew me in.

One of the things that I really liked about this book was the commitment to the premise. Suzy McKee Charnas really follows through on her ideas. There is no romanticization, ever. If you think there is, you probably just haven't gotten to your reality check yet. The women may seem almost utopian at first, but just you wait. There's a hidden side to everything. I liked how it took time for Alldera to learn about her new surroundings and time for her to figure out what she felt like she should be doing. There are no easy answers for her, and that felt very true to me.

For all the flaws of the women and fems, it was nice to see that the entire world isn't the bleakness that was shown in the first book. I'm really looking forward to the next book in the series, although given my reading schedule, I have no idea of when I might be able to get to it.

[Sally · Rating 1 out of 5]

No.

[Jack Deighton · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Walk to the End of the World fem Alldera finally escaped from the Holdfast, the brutal male dominated enclave which had been set up after the Collapse. Pregnant and starving, she makes her way across the desert into the grasslands where she is rescued by a Mare, one of a society of women who ride horses and patrol the desert to ensure no men from the Holdfast ever learn of their existence and also prevent free-fems, escapees from the Holdfast, from attempting to return to overthrow the men there.

It is these Mares who embody the Motherlines of the title, their ancestors having been made able to bear clones of themselves by scientists before things went awry, resulting in different breeds of descendants who look alike within each type. (The mechanics of the trigger for this reproduction strain credulity a little but also provide a source of derision towards them from the free-fems.)

The Mares’ decision to keep Alldera’s cub (as children are called here) and raise her as a Mare runs against previous practice whereby all such children of the Holdfast were entrusted to the free-fems. Alldera’s allegiances swing between Mares and free-fems (with whom she spends some time) as the narrative progresses. But, despite tensions within each of them, it is her affinity with both groups that brings them closer together among rumours of the Holdfast descending into conflict over diminishing amounts of food.

Motherlines narration does not embody the disjointed structure of Walk to the End of the World but the pastoral/nomadic lifestyles of the Mares and free-fems again resemble those in other books I have read recently, >Bluesong and In the Red Lord’s Reach. Charnas is more concerned with the position of women, however, and the societies they might produce if left to themselves. As such Motherlines is in the fine SF tradition of “What if?”

[Tomson Jane Oliver · Rating 2 out of 5]

A product of its time, an interesting look into the perspectives of one woman author regarding a possible dystopian future. The notion that some sort of nuclear war has taken out most of humanity and left the Earth a barren wasteland is not new, but the reason I picked up this book to read was that it offered a female perspective on surviving under such circumstances. There's tons of literature out in the world sharing a male perspective, so I was intrigued.

I just couldn't get past the use of GMO tech to modify women and horses so that women could breed without men, but instead use these special "creatures" to help them create motherlines. My thought is that this author could have done a motherline concept better justice if she'd just invented a breeding process sans bestiality.

Some followup questions I have... Why did the author stop there with GMO? Why not explore other aspects of its impact on the future as Margaret Atwood did in some of her stories such as Oryx and Crake?

Also, the relationships these women have with one another remind me too strongly of outdated butch vs. femme expectations of lesbian loves and lesbian hates. In my view, lesbianism goes beyond simplification and there are many sorts of dynamics within communities of women including women who chose not to be with anyone at all, women who are gender fluid, women who date a spectrum of genders, etc. Additionally, I'm pretty well tired of butch women in stories being turned into abusers in their love relationships.

Overall, this story was just not my cup of tea.

[Stephen Poltz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had heard better things about this book than the first in the series, Walk to the End of the World. It’s certainly different in how it’s written and it’s about a women’s dystopia rather than that of men. But I felt it suffered from several issues, most notably, a boring plot. It follows the character Alldera from the first book as she discovers tribes of women and free fems out beyond the Wild. The world building is pretty great and the prose is generally decent. However, I just couldn’t get involved with the characters, much like the first book. Even though Alldera was in the focus of the book, I couldn’t identify with her. Nonetheless, this is the second book of the Holdcraft Chronicles which is in the Gaylactic Spectrum Hall of Fame and a Sideways retro award winner.

Come visit my blog for the full review…
https://itstartedwiththehugos.blogspo...

[Stephen Poltz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had heard better things about this book than the first in the series, Walk to the End of the World. It’s certainly different in how it’s written and it’s about a women’s dystopia rather than that of men. But I felt it suffered from several issues, most notably, a boring plot. It follows the character Alldera from the first book as she discovers tribes of women and free fems out beyond the Wild. The world building is pretty great and the prose is generally decent. However, I just couldn’t get involved with the characters, much like the first book. Even though Alldera was in the focus of the book, I couldn’t identify with her. Nonetheless, this is the second book of the Holdcraft Chronicles which is in the Gaylactic Spectrum Hall of Fame and a Sideways retro award winner.

Come visit my blog for the full review…
https://itstartedwiththehugos.blogspo...

[Ralph Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a book that’s published in the 1970s to late 1990s, Suzy McKee Charnas really outdone herself in writing The Holdfast Chronicles.

Known as the feminist science fiction writer, this book is about how women are used as breeding slaves and not as partners. It is also about the freedom and power for women, and goes to show how far society would be mean to women as long as the women are being limited of their freedom. Feminism has become more apparent now in the 21st century. We see Gender Studies as something that we can take a course from to learn, countries trying to implement as much gender equality as possible so women are no longer seen as second-class human beings.

When these women have power, it becomes apparent that women can be as powerful as men when they take over the world. Or at least, have a woman’s point of view when making policies and new laws.

[Darnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the culmination of the previous book I expected, more of a counterpart. This one did feel more exploratory and challenging to the reader, but I still have mixed feelings. I get why the author would want to spend so much time on petty conflicts, but that doesn't make them fun to read.

I can accept the survival of cloning technology for the sake of the narrative, but I really don't get what the inclusion of horses does thematically or metaphorically. Very odd decision. I don't think the author is on the side of anyone in the final debates, since all the arguments are bad, yet reflections of common expectations for this setting.

This one intentionally leaves you without any sort of plot resolution, yet my feeling is that it's intended to be bleak. No one has answers, none of the plans will work, humanity will just die off.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I definitely enjoyed this one more than Walk to the End of the World as this is based solely on the women (or fems) in the dystopian world of Holdfast. I liked learning about the different sets of women - the free fems, the riders, the slaves, the fems - and learning their history and customs and how they became who they are. I felt more connected to these characters and thought they were complex and flawed.

[Emalee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, surprisingly good book. I really enjoyed the character development and world building. It offered a new way of reproduction that I have not found in any other woman only world story before. Super fascinating!

[James]

Alldera escapes from the Holdfast, a feudal post-holocaust enslave in which women are enslaved creatures, and survives a long trek in search of a community of women who reproduce parthenogenetically

[Iany Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary!
I loved now i have to see the movi for comparate

[Elena · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is intense, and at times very strange, but also beautiful and insightful. Human communities finding hope and meaning in a post-apocalyptic world - which is cliched in a way, but Charnas doesn't handle these themes in a way that is typical at all.

[Giddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book felt a little slower than the first, Walk to the End of the World, and some of the way the world of the women works is a bit offputting and strangely explained. But toward the end where two societies meet, and attempt to work with one another, is fascinating. Both contemporary and remniscent of the past, the tense between assimilating what is good, and leaving behind negative behaviors born out of post traumatic stress from a life time of abuse is very well done, as is the simple misunderstanding and lack of patience on the part of the people who have not grown up in an abusive environment. The end started to feel old testament to me. I will definitely read the next two books, and that is rare for me because I usually get bored with series. Also interesting because there are no male characters in the ook.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2237380.html[return][return]Motherlines takes a lot of Walk to the End of the World and inverts it - we switch from a male to a female central character, and discover that a lot of what had been presented as unchallengeable fact in the first volume is in fact very different looked at from the other side of the gender divide. In addition, the actual plot has some very impressive twists and turns in what is still a very short book.[return][return]Motherlines is really excellent, and though Walk to the End of the World is not quite as good you enjoy the second much more for having read the first. And neither is very long.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent post-apocalypse novel by a feminist writer. It is better than the first book in the series because Charnas was a better writer when this was published. Also, it continues the story of Alldera, the escaped fem slave, who was the more intriguing character in Walk to the End of the World. I don't think it is a spoiler to say that Alldera finds women who escaped Holdfast, but it is more interesting than that. That said, I think one aspect of the book continues to turn off many readers. I don't want to get into details, but I understand why many readers are appalled. I think Charnas could have devised an alternate way to explain human parthenogenesis that would have served as well.

[Darla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second title of the Holdfast Series. The main character breaks free and searches finds her own kind. This is why I like this author so much, when she finds her own kind, she discovers that men aren't all to blame and wonders if there is a possibility of getting along. This is the book that has the famous horse scene that all my fellow reading buddies were so shocked about. So good. Again, this book is one of the reasons I like man-hating Sci Fi. Recommended to Katy P. who claims she likes this kind of book.

Recommended reading from: http://www.feministsf.org/bibs/recomm....

[Steven Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent tale of a dystopian future where mankind live in protected holdfasts. Women are slaves to the men who control everything. Very strong homosexual elements in the book. The men in the holdfasts only sleep with women for procreation not pleasure or love. The women, at least those that escape to live as free wanders, are also homosexual. Nothing really groundbreaking or different in this tale but a decent yarn if you are in the mood for some older (late '70s) Science Fiction which is something that I am fond of.

[Brenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book really influenced my naive 15 year old mind. For the good? I think so. The most feminist book I had read so far. If the school would have known what was in it, it would have been pulled from the shelves. WARNING: sex scenes.

[Avis Black]

After the first Holdfast book, this one was a big disappointment. The characters are just not very interesting.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

The prequel was hard to take. This one is just right.

[Tfromo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would have given this book more stars if I hadn't found the women's method of reproduction repulsive.