The Furies
Suzy McKee Charnas
Orb Books, 9/2001
ISBN:0312866062
In a world nearly destroyed by ecological catastrophe, the women (``fems'')
of the Holdfast are abject slaves kept only for labor and breeding.
Alldera, who escaped to the matriarchal Riding Women of the Grasslands, leads a band of other refugee fems back to take the Holdfast from its male masters. Internecine strife has meanwhile done most of their work- -very few men remain in a few ghost towns--but the Free Fems soon find their worst enemy is dissension among themselves.
The author, Suzy Charnas Suzych@indirect.com , June 19, 1996:
This futuristic, feminist epic isn't quite over yet.
This is not the end of this sequence of books; a fourth and final volume is in the works. Readers should be aware that this group of books has been written more or less in "real time" -- that is, the whole sequence will cover a period of about 25 years, and the first book, WALK TO THE END OF THE WORLD, was published in 1974. I didn't plan it this way, but because the novels have come out of my own experience of the growth and development of feminism during my own adult lifetime, each book reflects real-world changes as well as changes in my perceptions of the problems of sexism and people's responses to sexism.
That's why each book is not only another step in a sort of improvisational SF feminist epic, but a complete and free-standing novel in its own right. When I began THE FURIES, I thought I was going directly to the synthesis that would complete the series, having done sexism taken to its furthest extreme with WALK TO THE END OF THE WORLD (thesis) and then a pastoral (but not particularly peaceful) society of women only in MOTHERLINES (antithesis).
One reason THE FURIES took so long to write was that I wanted to skip over the harshest part -- an actual war, or more properly a slave-revolt, of the "fems" against their male masters -- and go right to a better life for all; just as so many women with feminist ideals wish desperately to be able to "skip" the harshest part in reality, the part where we seem to have the most to lose and the most to suffer, the part where we demand full recognition of our humanity and do whatever it takes to get it. Once I accepted the challenge of writing my way through a small, hot war, the projected "third and final volume" became two books, THE FURIES, and the last book, which has no title yet but which I think of as Sorrel's book (Sorrel is the daughter of Alldera, leader of the slave-revolt).
I'm glad now that I couldn't just cut to Utopia (which I don't believe in anyway, and Sorrl's book won't be a Utopia either) because while working on THE FURIES I found that a story of warfare over the deepest, most bitterly contested division of humankind could come out bursting not just power and pain, but with with irrepressible energy, and -- as much for the author as for readers -- surprises and delights; so don't be afraid of it, read it; and if you like it, rejoice: there's more to come!
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