ISBN: 0-441-00405-9 Order from: Amazon.com
Mild-mannered and lightweight romance on a planet of modest strangeness; told with significant skill.
Reviewed by David on August 09, 1998
Genre: Science Fiction (Frontier Settlement, Humor, Romance)
Synopsis: After leaving the rural world Keramos for schooling on a more sophisticated planet, Delanna is forced to return to her native land to settle her mother's estate. Unfortunately, the somewhat arcane laws of Keramos complicate Delanna's inheritance, and instead of the planned brief legal visit, Delanna's homecoming becomes both longer and more important to her future.
In the process, the young woman encounters several issues of love, friendship and courtship on this underdeveloped but beautiful world.
Full Review: Delanna absorbed contempt for the predominantly agrarian country from her mother. It is not surprising that her plan is to arrange for sale of her inherited land and never come back to Keramos. Unfortunately, her lawyer has not mentioned a few vital items regarding inheritance and marriage on Keramos. It is only after arrival on the rural world, that Delanna finds that to claim her inheritance she has to marry a neighbor—a vaguely remembered childhood friend, now a despised hick.
While the action takes place on another world, this world is sketched lightly. Most of the exotic animals, like the fascinating scarab (not a bug), the beautiful and almost mythical Royal Mandarins and the playful fire monkeys, could be replaced with different props without altering the basic plot. It is the humans' behavior, mating and otherwise, that is the real subject matter here.
This novel provides standard romance elements on a background of settler society on an Earth-like planet. The romance plot is handled deftly by the authors. By the end of the book, the reader is manipulated to sympathy for the protagonists. Promised Land is not a monumental achievement like Wills's Doomsday Book; it is a lightweight but enjoyable romance in space, full of country charm and easy humor.
The paperback version of Promised Land is available from Amazon.com.
Note, an interesting interview with Connie Willis regarding her book Passage is here.
Overall: 6; Plot: 5; Characters: 6.5; Style: 6; World-building: 5; Originality: 6;
Copyright date 1996, The Berkley Publishing Group (Ace), February 1997, Cloth, 362 pages
ISBN: 0-441-00405-9 Order from: Amazon.com