BOOK REVIEW: Vonda McIntyre's Dreamsnake

At a local used bookstore in Glendale I finally got my hands on a copy of Vonda McIntyre's Dreamsnake, one of the rare works of speculative fiction to have won the Nebula, Hugo and Locust award. I often read these books and Dreamsnake is one of the few books that is double Hugo-Nebula winner that I have not read yet. The others are Lois McMaster Bujold's Paladin of Souls and Arthur C. Clarke's Fountains of Paradise.

Most double winners are classic books, that deserve to be re-read over and over again. Connie Willis Doomsday Book, Frank Herbert's Dune, David Brin's Startide Rising and Issac Asimov's The Gods Themselves fall into that category. Interestingly, recently I tried to re-read Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossessed and I could not get through it. A few years ago I finally read Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama and was surprised at how painful it was to get through it.

So, I really did not have high expectations for Dreamsnake. However, I was pleasantly surprised.

Dreamsnake is about a Healer named Snake who uses snakes to heal people. The book mentions repeatedly that she uses the rare dreamsnake to help people who have serious (potentially fatal) illnesses, by either curing them or easing their transition to death. What's curious is that during the course of the book, Snake heals several people without a dreamsnake, and in one case even loses a patient despite not having one of the alien serpents at hand.

One of the key features of Dreamsnake is its depiction of a very different society. It is primarily agrarian, with almost no technology and very curious cultural practices (like not wanting to tell acquaintances your "true name" and a completely different view of contraception). One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the completely laissez-faire approach to sexuality. Most adult relationships are in partnerships of three, usually two women and one man or two men and one woman.

A drawback of the book is the somewhat stilted nature of the prose. The sentences are very short and not very lyrical in nature. I'm not sure if this is because the book is over thirty years old, but I suspect that much be a factor. Another weakness of the book is the central character Snake. As depicted, she is not a very likable person and was very hard for this reader to identify with. She is moody, cranky, unattractive and uncertain. She is also brave and dedicated to helping others, almost to a fault.

The story resolves itself in the end in a somewhat unsurprising manner, with Snake finding love and companionship and a solution to dealing with the lack of dreamsnakes on her world. Overall, I'm glad that I finally read the book but I would not classify it as a classic of the form like most Hugo-Nebula winners.

Title: Dreamsnake.
Author: Vonda McIntyre.
Length: 319 pages.
Publisher: Dell.
Date: June 1979.

OVERALL GRADE: B.

PLOT: B+.
IMAGERY: B.
IMPACT: B-.
WRITING: B.