tStarhawk has written a very impressive book with her first fiction novel. It's quite long and filled with many interesting characters. The city that is the main setting, or home to the main characters that are either imprisoned in the south or travel there to assist, is San Francisco in 2048. A revolution has taken place and the city has broken away from the rest of the world, creating what some call a utopia and others label it as a form of communism that works. Whichever it is, Starhawk has thought her setting out well when creating it. The city has no weapons or army, and the south is planning to invade.tThe city has what everyone else calls magic, however, and is populated by witches. In truth, the people there have become in tune with the Earth, with nature, and are able to use energy to their advantage, to work with ch'i's and auras and are at times able to communicate with each other through dreams.tI like how there are enough characters that you aren't stuck on one through the whole book. Each chapter deals with a different character. First we have Maya, a 98 year old storyteller living in the city, who clearly remembers living through the 60s and all the wars that have taken place in her lifetime. Then Bird, Maya's grandson, who disappeared over ten years ago, and is in prison in the south. Then Madrone, a healer/doctor, who eventually leaves the city to go help in the south. Then back to Maya, then Bird, then Madrone again. It doesn't always go in that pattern. Sometimes you have a chapter with Madrone, followed by another Madrone chapter. But I like the feel that gives the book. It's not a sameness of thought and feel through the entire book.tThe characters have a strong feel to them, so you can really get into their heads, you can put yourself right there with them as you read.tThere is a lot of sex in the book, but it isn't described in pornographic detail, just the feel of it, and how it affects the characters. In the city, people are very open sexually and gender doesn't matter much. There's male/female, female/female, male/male, and everybody together sex. I'm not quite used to that, so I was a little taken aback when I first encountered it in the book, but by the end of the book was used to it.tI quite liked the book, but it does feel a bit female-gender oriented. I never really paid attention to that while reading the book but by the end it was getting to be a bit much. For instance, Madrone learns to call bees to help her heal people and when she does so, she always calls them "sisters". Unless I am mistaken, all bees are male except the queen, so her calling them sisters just seemed completely wrong and stood out every time it happened. Also, she goes into detail on the female/female sex (how it felt, the touches and the reactions, and how it felt afterwards) but not on the male/male sex and only a little on the male/female sex. Not that I was particulary wanting details on the male/male sex, but if you're going to focus on the one, why not the other as well? The city is supposed to be full of people from all different religions, but not one person ever in the book says "Thank God" or uses the word God in anyway way. It's always "Thank Goddess!" or using the word Goddess. This being a pagan book, I expected a lot of that, but if you live in a city with people of all religions, wouldn't someone, at least once, say God instead of Goddess? By the time you're getting to the end of the book the female-gender oriented aspect starts to get a bit much.tStill and all, it's a very good book and I highly recommend it.
I've read a lot of dystopian novels. Utopian ones are more rare, as the old idea of conceiving of a utopia as a way of bringing it about seems quixotic to the modern. But second-wave feminism produced one science fiction novel that worked well for me--Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time. Starhawk writes The Fifth Sacred Thing two decades later, in th 1990s. But, she cops Piercy's technique for connecting with the modern reader: contrasting a dystopia with a utopia and setting some parts of the novel in each.Starhawk is a Wiccan priestess; the utopia is Wiccan in nature. Built as an anarcha-feminist collective over what is today San Francisco, all beliefs and ethnicities are venerated, all are equal, and no go wanting. In contrast is the dystopia of fundamentalist religion merged with corporate capitalism that seizes power in LA. The most interesting update of Piercy is the critique of second-wave feminism. The Southland, stronghold of the oppressors, has several resistance groups. One, wives of the oppressors, wives who have had their professions stripped from them who meet in an encounter group modeled on circles of early 1970s feminist, is criticized for its focus on the wealthy and attempt to view oppression of women outside the matrix of all other oppressions. But I also liked the other Resistance groups very much. The Angels--blond women bred as sex toys, who when they are freed, only know anger and lust for killing. The rats--urban street gangs. The hill boys--those who survive outside, stealing from the wealthy. And inbetween San Francisco and LA, in current San Luis Obispo, the monsters: deformed from radiation that leaked from the nuclear plant that saboteurs from the north destroyed in order to cripple the southern fighting effort. Her characterizations are wonderful. Madrone--the healer--a classically trained ob/gyn who incorporates accupuncture, herbals, witchcraft, and by the middle of the book, sensing/healing learned from people who have learned to live with bees. Bird--a musician--imprisoned, tortured, eventually freed, recaptured. Maya, an ancient woman who remembers what is our present day (hippy reminiscences of the Summer of Love are her earliest stories) and others who embrace nonviolence and equality as a way of life as well as a way of fighting.The worldbuilding is wonderful, rife with plausible details drawn from a deep knowledge of California. The focus on resources througout, while Wiccan, is also quintessentially Californian--water being the one that gets the most focus.And what draws me, a non-Wiccan, in is the easy moving between fantasy, magic realism, and plausible science fiction that allows a read within a world that the mind doesn't challenge. And it doesn't because one is so wrapped up in these characters. One feels their pain, their sadness, their joy, their love. So, is the best way to bring change to conceive of a utopia, implement it on a small scale, and teach it to those resisting more intractable repression? Probably not. But this is a fun read, regardless.
Do You like book The Fifth Sacred Thing (1994)?
I seriously loved this book, it's one of the books that I've submerged in the whole time I was reading it, and I was sad when it was over. I enjoyed this in a similar way to the way that I enjoyed Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time and He, She, It. These books gives me clues and fantasies about the world I'd like to live in, how people could treat each other and the world, what peace might be like. I loved the scope of this, and I enjoyed the plot. I wish that I could find more things that feel this way to read, as well as TV and movies that I could watch. This is how I most like to be entertained and illuminated.
—Abilouise
11/2012 I find more to love each time I come back to this book, this time being no exception. I come to this book like water in the desert and it purifies and magnifies me.2/2011 Unequivocally, I love this book. I live inside it and believe in it with all my heart. It feels like home, the society depicted herein, with its collective collaborative hippie soul. Sure, it's preachy and even didactic in parts. I find I don't mind preachy, so long as I'm sitting in the choir.After reading the stark and scary natural histories I've been dipping into lately, this utopia of the possible- although it's a hard-won utopia indeed- feels comforting to me. I believe that people can work together and create a society which honors the earth and the sacred things thereupon, that people can honor one another and find new ways to relate to their environments. I have to believe it, otherwise I'd give up. This is the book I turn to when I think about giving up.3/2008 A re-read. I love this book unreservedly. I'm not particularly fond of the whole new age ideology. I'm not a believer in any of the recognizable religions, including Paganism. I worship at the altar of science. And yet I buy this book completely. I inhabit it like a second skin. This book is the rhetoric of hope, of redemption, of bravery and of transformation. I don't know if it's particularly well-written, I've never noticed in the score of times I've read it. I don't care if it's not. I fall in and am consumed.It helps that, religious overtones aside, I share the values espoused here. I'm a Utopian at heart, I suppose. Free love and tomatoes for everyone! Never thirst.
—Melody
Where to start? This book is deeply affecting and touched on so many of my passions, it is difficult to know where to start. First, it is another entry in the large (and still growing) list of what my friend Hobo Lee used to call Northern California Post-Apocalyptic fiction. Do we in Northern California have a cataclysm fetish? Or do we here in this beautiful and fragile place just wisely wish for an end to this society as we know it before it kills us all? In any case, Starhawk has taken all that she knows from her work as a pagan, anarchist, activist, nonviolent organizer, and created a world that may be our near future.Set in the mid-21st century in San Francisco, an earth-worshiping, polycultural, polyamorous, polytheist culture of nonviolent warriors is pitted against the last brutal and convulsive remnants of industrial society. Primary cultural values of the post-uprising San Francisco are the four sacred things: Earth, fire, water, and air. The story largely follows the fates of the members of one courageous family as they leave paradise for hell to face off against their would-be conquerors.The story is threaded with the themes of spirituality, autonomy, and mutual aid. It debates the nature and effectiveness of violence and nonviolence. It is thoroughly steeped in earth-centered spirituality, anarchism, ecology, and resistance to destruction.You may have read Ecotopia years ago. The Fifth Sacred Thing is Ecotopia for grown-ups. Also a Utopian vision for passionate revolutionaries, anti-capitalists, anarchists, eco-defenders, and spiritual folks.
—Rico
