Reviews for Rite Of Passage

The average rating for Rite Of Passage based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-06-25 00:00:00 Josh de Grussa [7/10] Somebody quiped this is the best juvenile that Heinlein never wrote. In her excellent review of the Panshin novel [jo Walton] , Jo Walton argues that the author's goal was more subversive than paying homage to the grandmaster of science-fiction, a point sustained by the known critical disagreement between the two. I have read literally hundreds of coming of age stories, most of them fantasy or SF, which might explain my lower rating for what is arguably one of the least conventional and better written of the lot. The setting: Earth has been completely destroyed in a global conflagration in the 21st century. The survivors scattered through the galaxy in hastily built multigenerational spaceships. Some of them settled on planets, where they struggled hard to make them habitable and to produce enough food to survive, leaving too little time for education and leisure. A minority remained in the spaceships, avoiding overpopulation through strict birth control, preserving the advanced technology of Earth and trading this knowledge with the colonists in exchange for essential raw materials. In the absence of real life challenges inside the carefully controled and regulated environment of the Ships, all young people reaching the age of 14 are sent on a 30 day Trial down to one of the planets, there to survive only by their wits and skills. Not everybody survives the initiation ritual, but the ones who return safely are considered adults with full rights in the society. The hero(ine): Mia Havero is the narrator of the novel, in an extended flashback, starting with her tomboy phase at age 12, following through her two years advanced education and survival training, her Trial and its aftermath. She is a wonderful guide through the Ship's world, spunky and witty, "a reluctant daredevil" with a passion for old-fashioned sF stories and a carefully masked streak of loneliness and insecurity. In her own words she is "a little black-haired, black-eyed girl, short, small, and without even the promise of a figure". Much as I liked Mia and her tribulations adapting to a new school, new friends, new ideas and new responsibilities, I sometimes felt her character is a bit too good to be true. Like the kids from a TV series I used to watch (Dawson Creek) she seems written by a parent who puts down how he would like his offspring to talk and to learn from mistakes. Real teenagers, from my experience, are a lot more anarchic and authority flouting, less focused on growing up and more self-centered than Mia. This is not to say she is tame, or well mannered, just a tad too didactic and well organized for a 12-14 y.o. Things I liked best about the story: * fables and parables used in the text as a learning tool, storytelling in its more pure and effective guise, including the riddle games so beloved by Tolkien and a tongue-in-cheek approach to classic quests to slay the ogre and win the hand of the princess in marriage. * a project Mia has to write about ethics, where she studies "Epicureans and Utilitarians; Stoics; Power Philosophers, both sophisticated and unsophisticated; and humanists of several stripes. All these not to mention various religious ethical systems." She balances the strengths and shortcomings of each system, and later sees how they apply to real life conflicts during her Trial. Again, it is done by Panshin in an over-simplified and didactic manner, but it is still very effective. Example: The trouble with stoicism, it seems to me, is that it is a soporific. It affirms the status quo and thereby puts an end to all ambition, all change. It says, as Christianity did a thousand years ago, that kings should be kings and slaves should be slaves, and it seems to me that it is a philosophy infinitely more attractive to he king than to the slave. * Mia's "reluctant daredevil" atitude, her "Hell on Wheels", "The Compleat Young Girl" sarcastic persona, always ready to mock her own fears and honestly admit her faux pas. Favorite episode is her participation in an illegal sortie outside the Ship, in the company of her friends from the Survival Class. I had never realized before that adventures took so much 'doing', so much preparation and so much cleaning up afterward. That's something you don't see in stories. Who buys the food and cooks it, washes the dishes, minds the baby, rubs down the horses, swabs out the guns, buries the bodies, mends the clothes, ties the rope in place so the hero can conveniently find it there to swing from, blows fanfares, polishes medals, and dies beautifully, all so that the hero can 'be' a hero? Who finances him? I'm not saying I don't believe in heroes - I'm just saying that they are either parasites or they spend the bulk of their time in making their little adventures possible, not in enjoying them. Other pearls of wisdom from Miss Havero: There is nothing like hunting a tiger almost barehanded to give you a feeling of real confidence in yourself. If you manage to survive the experience. * the general pacing and the length of the novel : a fast and entertaining read that kept me glued to the pages from start to finish. * finally, I really appreciated how the comic elements and the light headed spirit of a fun adventure a replaced later in the novel by the real issues Mia will have to deal with as an adult: intolerance, xenophobia, death, free will versus predetermination, the individuall versus the political, and more. This is where Jo Walton draws our attention that becoming an adult is not equal to saving the planet from an alien invasion in a blaze of spectacular explosions and other special effects, but looking inside yourself and finding the strength to change what is wrong with your society instead of accepting the status quo. Here are my favorite quotes from this later phase in the novel: I've always wondered what it would be like to be a spear carrier in somebody else's story. A spear carrier is somebody who stands in the hall when Caesar passes, comes to attention, and thumps his spear. A spear carrier is the anonymous character cut down by the hero as he advances to save the menaced heroine. A spear carrier is a character put in a story to be used like a piece of disposable tissue. In a story, spear carriers never suddenly assert themselves by throwing their spears aside and saying, "I resign. I don't want to be used." They are here to be used, either for atmosphere or as minor obstacles in the path of the hero. The trouble is that each of us is his own hero, existing in a world of spear carriers. We take no joy in being used and discarded. I was finding then, that wet, chilly, unhappy night, that I took no joy in seeing other people used and discarded. --- If I had the opportunity, I would make the proposal that no man should be killed except by somebody who knows him well enough for the act to have impact. No death should be like nose blowing. Death is important enough that it should affect the person who causes it. --- I can think of nothing sadder than to know that you might be more than you are, but be unwilling to make the effort. --- Maturity is the ability to sort the portions of truth from the accepted lies and self-deceptions that you have grown up with. Recommended for readers who are not yet fed up with coming of age stories and who appreciate classic SF.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-01-27 00:00:00 Karen Monegatto The plot of this rather fine coming-of-age SF novel is described well in several of the other reviews. Oddly enough, no one seems to mention that it is constructed around Shakespeare's Sonnet 94, which appears on the last page. Since the poem isn't nearly as well-known as it deserves to be, and it's one of my favorites, let me reproduce it here: They that have power to hurt and will do none, That do not do the thing they most do show, Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow, They rightly do inherit heaven's graces And husband nature's riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others but stewards of their excellence. The summer's flower is to the summer sweet, Though to itself it only live and die, But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.