Sakura of DOOM

The planet of Tal-Lith's sun is about to consume the planet. To try and save the people, the Concord has sent a team of five to Tal-Lith to try to use the planet's religion to convince the people to move off-planet. There's Lhar the Fearless Leader, Nevin the Naive, T'Mero the Brawn, Diri the Sex Kitten, and Syza, the healer who can no longer heal. Although their entire plan depends on Diri, who is of a race that happens to fit the description of the Tal-Lith goddess Lith, the bulk of the book is about Lhar and Syza.

So far, this is my favorite of Maxwell's books (including her Elizabeth Lowell books). I think part of it is my unexpected mood shift from romance to pulp SF—I started Timeshadow Rider again for the fourth time and it's finally holding my interest—but part is also because I love the cold, tortured heroine. (I was so tempted to put a Twitter hashtag #iamsopredictable here.) It is so odd reading her SF after having read quite a few of her romances back in the day; I can still see much of the same gender politics and character types, but seeing them in here SF brings a whole new twist to it.

Lhar is brusque and bossy like most of her alpha males, but it makes much more sense, given that the entire team depends on him to lead them through the mission alive. Diri also resembles the Evil Sexy Women from romances, but rather than condemning her, Maxwell simply notes that Diri's culture isn't given to monogamous relationships and shows several times that the men being jealous over her is their problem, not hers. And although she's tried to have traumatized, cold heroines like Syza, it's nice to have the reason be emotional manipulation and planet-wide destruction rather than the usual rape in romances. (Seriously, romances. I love you, but can we please not attribute all female trauma to rape, losing a child, or emotionally dysfunctional romance?)

Also, there is a scene in the middle of the book that reads like the template of the "foreplay but not yet sex" scene in all her romances that I've read, in which the heroine is touching the hero and unintentionally arousing him, usually because she knows very little about sex and/or sexual arousal. In the romances, this almost always leads to the hero blaming the heroine for blue balls and yelling at her for not wanting him when she retreats because of emotional trauma. In here, Lhar basically says, "Hey, that's really nice, I like it, keep going, and please don't feel any pressure to go any further than you feel comfortable. I can deal." It's so sweet! He knows she dislikes mindtouch, so he actually tries to avoid doing it to her whenever possible. And he backs off if she gets too agitated and doesn't blame her for it! Romance heroes, you should take notes.

I should probably say more about the world building, given that this is SF, but I don't tend to be a very good critic of it. I did enjoy the bits about the worship of Lith and I especially loved learning how the religion came to be, and the desert-like setting gave it a rather Dune-like setting. That said, I didn't get the impression that the Lithan people (Tal-Lithan? Liths? I can't remember) were thinly veiled metaphors for POC, but I may just not be picking up on things a reader who reads more SF would. The world just felt so alien and so completely different, including the people of the Concord.

( Spoilers )

From what I can tell, this is set in the same universe as The Jaws of Menx and The Singer Enigma, although I have no idea if there's anything similar about the three save the Concord. I need to reread Jaws of Menx.

The seemingly backward planet Menx is about to decide whether it should join the Concord or not; due to complicated politics, if they don't, the planet will essentially be strip-mined. Rhane of Siol has to get down there to recover the memories of his cousin's death. Along the way, he clashes with Menx's seemingly primitive belief in gods and runs into his childhood friend and crush Shiya.

That is a spectacularly bad plot summary, mostly because I can't remember the plot at all. In fact, there's a whole lot of this book that I don't remember, largely because I couldn't keep track of all the names and cultures and who meant what to whom and what insult meant what in what language.

Also, Rhane's cousin dies of a dread melting sickness, and I spent half of the book giggling hysterically any time anyone mentioned the melting sickness. Because it's a melting sickness! People turn into puddle of goop! There are tragic death scenes with one person essentially cradling a skin with goop! And my brain keeps going, "I'm meeeelting! I'm meeeelting!" a la Wizard of Oz. Sadly, I am pretty certain Maxwell meant for the disease to be heartwrenching and angsty, not giggle-inducing.

Well, my fit of being twelve does subside at the end, and the melting disease does become tragic, but not after a whole lot of laughter on my part.

I think I'd enjoy the worldbuilding more the second time around; this a book that focuses more on the revelations about the world than on the character relationships. I had gone in thinking it was the other way around, so I sort of skipped a lot of the worldbuilding details and therefore was a bit confused by the conclusion. I do wish we'd see more of Rhane and Shiya's relationship, though; what little is there is very interesting, and Shiya's very different from Maxwell/Lowell's standard too-innocent-to-live heroines.