Six Moon Dance - Softcover

TEPPER, Sheri S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006511872 ISBN 13: 9780006511878

Publisher: Avon Books, 1998

Synopsis

It was many years agothathumans came and settled the world of Newholme. In these early days, the first wave of pioneers struggled to make a home on the harsh, alien planet. As others from Earth came, the humans learned to bend Newholme to their will, to set down roots and raise up cities and farms and a grand temple to their goddess. But now strange things are happening. The very ground is shaking with volcanic eruptions, and all of Newholme is in peril.

And so it is that the great Great Questioner, official arbiter of the Council of Worlds, decides to pay a visit to the isolat ed planet to find out what is causing the increasingly violent disturbances. For rumors have long swirled throughout the Council about what really happened to the first settlers from Earth all those years ago-whispers about a terrible secret that lies buried deep within Newholme's past.

It is on Newholme that the Questionerwill meet Mouche, a beautiful youth of uncommon cleverness and spirit. It will fall to Mouche to discover and embrace that which makes him unique among humans. For Newholme's past is not dead, not completely. And the survival of an entire world depends upon Mouche appeasing something dark and terrible that's coiled within...and in his total surrender to the mysterious, ecstatic revelry that results when the six moons join.

About this title

Review

In Six Moon Dance, veteran fantasy and science fiction writer Sheri S. Tepper tells the tale of the strange planet Newholme. An intriguing human society occupies the metal-poor planet, a society with gender values quite different from Earth, resulting from a virus that kills 50 percent of baby girls at birth. Newholmians use the best and the worst of dogma, religion, and "patriarchy" to uphold a society where men manage the money but women hold the keys to power through church, reproductive control, and their own short supply. "Family men" pay exorbitant dowries in order to gain a temporary wife, contracted for wifely duties and reproduction for a number of years. When their marriage contracts are finished, the women, relieved of duty, retire to enjoy the sexual services of male "Consorts."

The plot here involves an official Questioner who visits Newholme to investigate reports of human rights abuses, the strange native inhabitants whose biology may hold the key to human survival on the planet, and a disastrous lunar alignment. Although quite creative, Tepper's plot is simply not as gripping as the sociology and society she invents for Newholme. She uses her feminist instincts and knowledge about the sexes and religion to create a world worth taking a look at. James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award judges should be sure to take a look at Six Moon Dance for its unique take on gender roles. --Bonnie Bouman

About the Author

Sheri S. Tepper is the author of more than thirty resoundingly acclaimed novels, including The Waters Rising, The Margarets, The Companions, The Visitor, The Fresco, Singer from the Sea, Six Moon Dance, The Family Tree, Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Shadow's End, A Plague of Angels, Sideshow, and Beauty; numerous novellas; stories; poems; and essays. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

About this edition

• Publisher: Avon Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0006511872
• ISBN 13: 9780006511878
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 460