This was the selection for a book group. I slogged along for awhile, then whined. A friend assured me that it was worth going on -- "it will get better when they get to the planet!" It did, marginally. It was published 20 years ago. The years have not been kind to it. The concerns about sex, and the assumed gender roles seem so odd to me, especially in a book set in the future.


It's a bad idea to publish scientific articles by a brilliant, accomplished woman because she was sexually exploited as a child?!? Rescuers find the last survivor of a group of humans explorers in a brothel, in horrible health, and think he was there for kicks? A mature man hides the fact that he's gay, and it would be a big deal if it was revealed?

A big -- gasp! -- reveal on the planet is that the larger of the alien species is the females, and the males are the homebodies. Oh, but just that one species. The other one, naturally, has alpha males.

The group has a den mother, Anne Edwards. Before they leave on their journey, she's a physician working in the one clinic serving a poor community, with little help, and she comes home to cook delicious meals for groups of friends. Her retired husband doesn't appear to help. Not just any meals -- she cooks the food that her guest ate as a child in Puerto Rico, or Texas, or Istanbul, and it's always perfectly authentic and delicious.


I just felt like it lurched from howler to howler. Not least of which is that the Jesuits mount an interstellar mission to a planet.

Faith is central to the book. We have Jesuits wrestling with their faith and duty. I guess that just doesn't do much for me. Perhaps if that was more to my taste, I'd have overlooked the other things that got on my nerves.