Agave Revealed
-
- $4.99
-
- $4.99
Publisher Description
A half-millennium after the last survivors of a dying Earth land on a pristine planet, the Eighteenth Mother, leader of the enlightened city of Pelion, finds herself at a crossroads. Though the long, slow process of Transformation is proceeding, a critical imbalance has emerged that threatens the success of this promised leap in human evolution, for far too few candidates are women.
She knows the Transformation of the world requires her to look to the slave city of Agave. There, seeds of a plot planted years before are beginning to blossom, and a key figure in that plan, Lillas, is about to flee Agave and seek refuge in Pelion.
While there and joined with Reddin, the city will face a conflict that threatens to rip Lillas from Pelion and return her to the mercies of Agave’s savage new ruler. The Eighteenth Mother knows that Agave must be reborn in order to ensure the Sower’s promise can be kept. The hidden key to that rebirth lies within Reddin and Lillas, but only if they can find it in time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This engaging second installment in LaForge's Maze series (set 50 years after The Marcella Fragment and enjoyable on its own) places romance at the crux of a conflict between city-states and their respective ideologies. She-Who-Was-Hesione, 18th Mother of the walled city of Pelion, inherits an intrigue two generations in the making between her city and Agave, a desert metropolis best known for its slave markets and for violently impeding Pelion-bound pilgrims. Her only hope of challenging Agave's aggression is to join Lillas, an Agave noblewoman, and Reddin, a Pelion Healer, in the mysterious rite of Transformation. LaForge's worldbuilding is lush and diverse, but incongruously heteronormative given Pelion's sex-positive matriarchy. While homosexuality is permissible, the necessity of male/female pairs for Transformation is taken for granted, and the only acknowledged form of sexual intimacy is a man "covering" a woman. Though sometimes marred by clunky exposition, uneven pacing, and inconsistent character development, LaForge's sophomore effort is a frequently engrossing exploration of post-Earth societies.
