![]() ![]() The threat comes, rather, from their guardians and protectors in the warrior garrisons. ![]() These inbred hillbillies don’t offer much threat to the Women’s Cities. There are some mavericks outside this system, bandits and nomads, and late in the story, we meet the hill-folk of Holyland, a religious patriarchy founded on full-blown misogyny. At age 5, a boy goes to live in the garrison, and at 15, he must choose either to go for glory as a Warrior or return in shame through the Gate to Women’s Country into the city, to lead the inglorious and enigmatic life of a Servitor. The women keep everything else going they do the herding, farming, manufacture, trading, education, governance. They are called Warriors, and do nothing but train for war and occasionally fight one with the Warriors of other cities. Outside the walls, in garrisons, live most of the men. ![]() Inside the city walls live children, women, and some men called Servitors. ![]() Nearly three centuries after nuclear war, a number of small cities, surrounded by radioactive desolations, are thriving on the Northwest Coast. Tepper’s lively, thought-provoking novel, “The Gate to Women’s Country,” the subject of the experiment is human gender. Sometimes what comes out is a monster, of course, but sometimes the rearrangement of facts produces beauty. Science fiction novels are like Frankenstein’s laboratory, a great place for experiments. ![]()
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