Subject: "Rainbow Man" by MJ Engh

From: [email-masked] (Brian Youmans)
Date: 27 May 93 01:39:25 GMT

Rainbow Man by M. J. Engh (1993, Tor, $17.95 hc, 253 pp.)
     M. J. Engh (of Arslan fame) is back with another book
concerned with gender, morality, sexuality, and power.  As usual,
she finds unusual ways of looking at things, and this book is much
different from her previous books.
     RM is set in a future where barely-sub-light traders move
between settled human worlds tenuously in touch with each other. 
Liss, a "starshipper", decides to get off her ship at the pleasant,
even utopian world Bimran - a lightly populated world with a gentle
climate and friendly, helpful people.  When she applies for a
visitor's permit, however, she finds that she, as an infertile
female, is classed as a man on Bimran - and due to her colorful
clothes the natives take to calling her "Rainbow Man".
     Not much actually happens in this book.  What there is is a
slow process of Liss discovering just how Bimran society works -
and why it works that way.  Liss and the reader have to deal with
questions about what is morality and goodness, is punishment
necessary, can you love someone whose beliefs you disagree with? 
What is the function of religion in a society, and what should it
be?
     I'm not going to tell you much about the plot, because there
isn't very much of it to tell.  But I'll say that for me the 250
pages went very quickly; you want to find out how Liss' story comes
out.  Engh leaves a lot of philosophical questions unanswered, but
you can tell where her sympathies lie...
     Read it - recommend it - it's a shoo-in for a Nebula
nomination for next year, and I'd like to see it on the Hugo
ballot.
                                - Brian Youmans

%A Engh, M. J.     
%T Rainbow Man     
%I Tor     
%O hc, $17.95     
%C NY  
%P 253
%D 1993
%G ISBN 0-312-85468-4