I probably hate this book more than it deserves. Connie Willis is a brilliant writer with a flair for witty dialogue and screwball romance. Not something that appears regularly in science fiction. The characters , the pathos, and the environment of both To Say Nothing Of the Dog and Doomsday Book was stunning enough that either of those books could be read over and over without losing their power.
Promised Land, by contrast, is nothing better than a Harlequin series romance set on a distant planet. Oh sure, there’s some witty dialogue, but the story could have easily been set on Australia as on the planet Keramos.
Doubt me still? Ok, here’s the blurb from the back of the book. "It has been 15 years since Delanna Milleflores set foot on Keramos. Now her mother has died, and she has returned only to settle and sell her estate. But Keramos has some surprising laws. To sell her farm, Delanna must first live on it for one year. And along with the land comes one Tarleton Tanner, heir to the adjoining farm. A man who, at the moment of her mother’s death, became Delanna’s husband…" I bought the book and started reading it thinking, it can’t be as bad as it looks. I was reading the 3rd chapter before I realized that it was actually much worse. The romance level plot devices are as follows: Delanna can’t leave Keramos because she’s out of money; there is a rakish other man leading the caravan across the continent for Delanna to flirt with; Delanna has a pet that she has brought on the planet illegally which is now contraband because Tarleton stole it from quarantine (giving them a little secret to share, awww.) Exhausted yet? Ok, I’ll stop, but there are several more trite plot twists littering up this book for anyone brave enough to read it.
But as I said, I probably hate this book more than it deserves. Had I picked it up not knowing how wonderful Connie Willis is on her own I would have thought it was alright and might have even sought out other titles by her because the dialogue is so darn good. Unfortunately I know how good Connie Willis is and this book is actually worse than Remake which I also hated. It was at least shorter.
So, if you have read Connie Willis, don’t read this one. Read Impossible Things again instead. If you haven’t read Connie Willis, can’t find anything else by her, and are in imminent danger of being stranded on a desert island with nothing to read if you don’t choose fast, then it can’t hurt.
Recommended:
