Reviews for The terrorists of Irustan

The average rating for The terrorists of Irustan based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-12-19 00:00:00 Thomas J Hawkins this is my third or so read of this book, so, not a first impression... this is a maybe uncategorizable novel--it has SF elements, certainly (civilization on a distant planet), dystopian ones (a society in which women are veiled, largely uneducated, pretty much property although not called slaves), feminist ones in droves, and social commentary up the wazoo. so what is it? i don't know, but it's unique, and it's heartbreaking, and it will remain on my shelves forever. as i read through this time, i kept up a running argument in my head with a young man of my acquaintance who resists fiercely the observations of feminism. that would never happen here, he says in my head. not possible, the legal system would never permit it, and so on. but many of these things have happened here, do happen here, will happen here. tales like this and The Handmaid's Tale are often dismissed as a form of literary hysteria--a collective female nightmare erupting into print. but women who pay attention will hear Irustani whispers in the daily news, in learned screeds, in voices both international and local. the issues the book covers, despite the Irustani setting, are endemic wherever there are humans. some day i hope that this book will truly be an artifact, an anachronism. i'm not holding my breath that it will happen in my lifetime.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-08-29 00:00:00 Doug McKay I didn't think they wrote feminist SF like this anymore. Okay, I know this book is not particularly recent, but it feels like it should be from the 80s. Not that I am complaining. It's a Handmaid's Tale sort of dystopia, one that in this case is a fictional future far-right take on Islam. With, yes, veiled women. Our heroine, Zahra, is a "medicant" (please note, in case you have done the same thing, that I read this as "mendicant" about five times; no, that would be a different sort of book) who is, basically, a doctor -- but one less well-trained than the doctors they have on Earth. Because here on this colony planet Irustan they have basically: mines, and a nasty prion disease that comes from breathing in dust in the mines. Also health care is, in Irustan's culture, exclusively the province of women. The novel devotes a lot of time to showing how much the culture hurts Zahra and her apprentice and her friends; it's slow-moving, but still a compelling read that kept me up past my bedtime. The women don't manage to completely break Irustani society by the end of the book, but they sure try; you can see it coming from a long way away, but this is the kind of book where it doesn't really matter. Also, I should point out that it ends about as happily as possible in a book where the theme is basically "the patriarchy crushes everyone, let's kill it" -- which is to say, not very. There are also some hints at queerness, which, given the resolution, is more poignant than anything, but I am always happy to see same-sex themes in my reading. Overall, I really liked the author's style, and I can't believe that somehow I missed this entirely the last time I was reading my way through feminist SF. I will definitely have to read more of her books.