Bookworm Speaks! - Venus of Dreams Review

Bookworm Speaks!

Venus of Dreams

by Pamela Sargent 

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Acquired: Amazon.com

Series: The Venus Trilogy (Book 1)

Paperback: 384 pages

Publisher: e-reads.com (December 1, 1999)

Language: English

Subject: Science Fiction

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The Story: Iris Angharads, a determined, independent woman, sets herself one massive goal: to make the poison-filled atmosphere of Venus hospitable to humans. She works day and night to realize her dream, with only one person sharing her passion, Liang Chen. It seems impossible to make Venus, with its intolerable air and waterless environment, into a paradise, but Iris succeeds. And in doing so, she also creates a powerful dynasty, beginning with her first born, Benzi Liangharad.

The Review: The author of this book is described as a feminist and truth-be-told, it shows for almost the entire first half of the text. The planet Earth described in this book is a world quite different from the one we know. It takes five-hundred years in the future and the planet Earth is controlled by a new order. Order and control and the keywords to remember here.

The main problem with this is that the reader never really goes into much detail about how this world came to be and how it actually functions. The best kind of world building is the kind that takes place in the background with little to no expository passages. This book actually does have a lot of exposition. The problem is that it is the explanation of what is going on inside of the character heads. With a world that is so very different from our own, the reader could really use a little explanation. 

Iris comes off as a very selfish character. Bookworm knows that the author was most likely attempting to portray the plethora of expectations placed upon women regarding parenting, lifestyle choices, and child rearing but that seems like a product of the older style of feminism born from the radicals of mid-century America, of which the author is most likely a product of. Iris, though seems to push away people who love her in the name of her ambition. Even though this is a world ruled by Islamic technocrats, that is a distinctly western viewpoint, particularly of the feminist viewpoint. 

Bookworm couldn’t help but feel sorry for Iris’ husband and son for being practically at the mercy of Iris’ personal ambitions and never really knowing the woman for who she was. She appears to be rather wishy-washy and unsure about the prospect of personal relationships. Iris want’s to be loved but she seems reluctant to give out love it return. Her husband is mostly used for sex. 

The topic of sex comes up very frequently. Half the time a character talks seems to be broaching the topic of who or what they will spend the night with. Bookworm knows that this was probably meant to espouse the “sexual liberations” movement condoned by many feminist ideologies, but it gets very tedious after a while. The reader doesn’t even get to read the sex! It is all implied! 

Something Bookworm has noticed in a great many works of fiction: Editors and publishers are perfectly fine with a graphic description of a knight being devoured by a dragon or a space trooper being torn to shreds by bullets but when it comes to said knight or soldier going to bed with some pretty woman or handsome man…”woah! man!!! Kids could be reading this! Just go write another scene where a man is bifurcated by a chainsaw.”

A Double Standard? 

Perhaps.

Frustrating? Especially in regards to this novel? 

Definitely. 

Bookworm believes that this book and ultimately perhaps, this entire trilogy was trying to hard to pull off what was done in Dune or Game of Thrones. A grand sweeping epic that spans generations with great societal and political pressure ultimately told through the limited eyes of a handful of characters. In the end, though, what we see through said limited gazes seems mostly concerned with the possibility that all love is doomed to failure. For a world named after a goddess of beauty and love, relationships don’t seem to work very well on the planet Venus.

Relationships seem to be the core of this novel. Interpersonal conflicts and marital troubles seem to take center stage for the first half of the novel and remain so throughout the text. Save perhaps for the pre-epilogue final act. 

One relationship that the author shoves down the reader’s throat almost continuously is the ongoing conflict between the ruling authority of Earth, the Islamic Muhktars and the Habbers, a faction of humanity who dwell in space based habitats, hence the name. Habbers possess advanced technology that could greatly aid the Venus Terraforming Project but they are viewed with suspicion by the populations of Earth and Venus. They believe that the Habbers want to take over or something like that. This book was desperately lacking exposition into who this solar system of the future actually moves, functions, or even how it came to be. 

The best guess is that the Muhktars view the Habbers and their technology as a threat to their well-ordered society. It is never made clear. Politics is a notoriously dense and complex topic and the people on the ground rarely know the whole story. If the author was attempting to convey this to the reader, Bookworm can safely say that they failed in this endeavor. Many times, Bookworm found themselves saying, “Shut up about the Habbers already!” or “Just go to war and be done with it!” What is politics without a war or two here and there. 

Final Verdict: While possessing some interesting ideas and world building and not a small amount of emotional eloquence, this book is ultimately undone by biting off more than it can chew. Trying too hard to be both intimate and epic at the same time and never quite accomplishing either. 

Rating: Three Symbols of Venus of Five

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