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3.5 

Walk to the End of the World

By Suzy McKee Charnas
Walk to the End of the World by Suzy McKee Charnas digital book - Fable

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Publisher Description

The “devastatingly powerful” first novel in the acclaimed classic science fiction series The Holdfast Chronicles, from the award-winning author (The Washington Post).

Winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award

Walk to the End of the World begins Suzy McKee Charnas’s incomparable epic tale of men and women, slavery and freedom, power and human frailty.

In a post-apocalyptic world, Alldera the Messenger is a slave among the Fems, in thrall to men whose own power is waning, until she escapes and is saved by a tribe of women whose strength and courage sustain her. Walk to the End of the World is old-school feminist science fiction at its most prophetic.

“Only one science fiction book in hundreds manages to convince the reader that it ever could have happened anywhere, and at least that few are worth reading at all. [Charnas has] created a future that is once believable and fascinating” —William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch

“One of the best books I’ve read this year.” —Dorothy Allison, New York Times–bestselling author of Bastard Out of Carolina

4 Reviews

3.5
“This book becomes more intense as it goes along, and some of the most profound statements are toward the end in the relationship (not romantic) of two of the characters. Charnas says she originally wrote it as a political satire, and bits of that are in evidence, in an entirely organic and plausible way. There was one character I didn't feel that I really understood - but not in a way that took away from the larger ideas. I am surprised this book isn't more know - if you are interested in patriarchy, dystopian novels where the disaster seems all too real and immanent you will be interested in this. Additionally I felt that she gives an view into the mindset of slave holders, and the slave, or any very gender divided society (including I am sure some of the ultra rightwing in the US.)”

About Suzy McKee Charnas

Suzy McKee Charnas is the author of over a dozen works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, including the Holdfast series from Tor Books and the Sorcery Hall series of books for young adults. She is the winner of the Hugo Award (for her short story "Boobs") and has won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award twice, once retrospectively for the first two Holdfast books and then for The Conqueror's Child, final volume of the Holdfast series. Her most recent book is My Father's Ghost, a narrative nonfiction work about her father's old age. She adapted her novel, The Vampire Tapestry, for the stage in the late 1990s.

She was born and brought up in New York City, the setting for the Sorcery Hall books, and she currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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