Just a comment on Jayge Carr's Levianthan's Deep (and hi there Jenny, I
too am a New Zealander but I happen to be living in Toronto at the moment
doing my PhD: bloody cold, but did you know that NZ is rated as having the
coldest temperatures in the house in winter in any developed country?).
liked the heroine Kimassu (?) very much: the novel is a neat role
reversal. In a land
where "women rule" the males of the species are deprived of all
opportunities to improve themselves, and consequently are shallow,
frivolous sexual objects. Sounds familiar. The critique of
colonism is also rather
neat.
However, there are two things about the novel that really made me
uneasy. The first is the homophobia: defined within the Kimassu's world,
it is a perversion. And the major evil earthman (Clem) is a queer: his
evil is linked to his sexuality. The second is the relationship between
Neill and Kimassu: companionate heterosexuality (with Neill educating
Kimassu and his ideology dominating) becomes the ideal and all other
relationships are subsumned to this ideal. This also sounds familiar.
Tanya.
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