Bet you can't begin to count the number of
people who have said I've read the greatest book
and you have just got to get a hold of it.
Well, I’m making this claim for
Courtship Rite by
Donald Kingsbury.
This book has driven me insane for the
past ― oh God, more than twenty years and really if I had to
be on a desert island, this is the book I’d take with me..
This book has turned me onto one of those dogged fanatics
who scour the used bookstores and
eBay hoping that I will catch a glimpse of a
soft-cover book bearing a familiar Rowena rendering of the
maran-kaiel. I first remember seeing a brief mention of this
book in of all places, the opening comic strip in "Heavy
Metal". I don't remember which issue (sometime in the early
80s) nor can I even tell you why the name caught my eye but
here was this cartoon giving a favourable critique of a
book. Intrigued, I found a copy and have not let it go
since.
This story is not for the
faint of heart as Kingsbury challenges the reader’s mindset
literally in the first few pages and goes on to firmly
establish the planet Geta in a few well placed strokes of
black on a pale ivory canvas. The story centers on a
marriage of five people, three of whom are brothers and have
formed a family they call the maran-kaiel. The characters
breathe as they struggle to forge a world from a place of
hardship and ignorance. Yet they do so with the greatest of
intelligence and compassion...which is what drew me first to
the book.
Over a period of time, all three brothers
choose a path to ensure the family's strength and success in
a world of necessary brutality softened only by the acts of
others. The brothers, Hoemei, Joesai and Gaet, have married
two women, Noe and Teenae, and are courting a sixth,
bringing their number of to six which is considered
fortuitous in their culture. There is a catch. The woman
that they are courting to become third-wife, Kathein, is
denied them and they are offered instead a woman declared a
religious heretic, Oelita, who preaches against Geta’s
tradition of cannibalism.
Their world unfolds and storms ripple
across their changing culture. The Kaiel and the other clans
on this forsaken planet are masters at genetic manipulation,
intrigue and resource management yet they lack simple tools
that we take for granted...inventing things as they go and
moulding their world as the stars revolve around them.
What is engrossing as well is his
world building. I can’t say that I’ve come across a
more completely outlined world as Geta. Kingsbury masters
his world in clearly defined laws of genetics and chemistry.
Most of the Geta is poisonous to its inhabitants and the
different societies have evolved around the impossible task
of thriving on this world. It’s a fascinating study of
culture. I can step back and look at it empirically but
really when reading the book, it sucks you in and immerses
you into their world. He does an incredible job of
constructing a de-evolved culture constricted by dietary
limitations while allowing the reader to make their own
connections to the “truth” of Geta. Towards the
end of the
book, the reader does get more information but
really, the construct is simply beautiful. It is both human
and alien.
The ending contains a few sparse sentences
that turn the book upside and really forces you to read it
again, if only to see the book in a new light.
It is a
science fiction story about people and an
anthropological study of ourselves. I have over a long
period of years collected many copies of this novel to give
away to friends. Some have even taken up the task of
scouring the bookstores in search of that elusive Donald M.
Kingsbury Classic. If you have the rare opportunity to find
this novel ― Buy it. Read it. Then pimp it.
Donald Kingsbury:
http://www.donaldkingsbury.com/
Wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtship_Rite |
