I picked this up at a SF convention and kept at it for about 200 pages, since it's light enough reading and has an interesting premise.

But oh goodness, I'm afraid I have to leave this novel back in the 1980s where it came from. I can take or leave the exploration of the premise -there's a lot of weird gender essentialism going on here that I don't think is going to get resolved by the end of the story, and then there's the lameness of a setting where all relationships are queer relationships, but the spotlight is on the one "transgressive" straight couple - but whatever. Some of the worldbuilding is fun, in a campy way - a Logan's Run sort of aesthetic.

However, I really quit because the characters are just not working for me. They are terribly flat, with wooden dialogue and experiences that are all surface, no depth. Obviously this is a Novel of Ideas, but the story moves too slowly for the characterizations to be so shallow.

If nothing else, I suppose we can all be grateful for those well-meaning 70s and 80s feminists teaching us what not to do in our feminist SF (with some exceptions, of course!) ( )

I can't say this book is perfect, but I'm still going to give it 5 🌟. It's about a land, probably north America, centuries after the nuclear apocalypse. When the Earth seemed healed enough, the survivors made their way from the underground shelters and began to create civilization again. Women gathered together, separating themselves from men, in the belief that men could not be trusted with the reins of leadership again, lest their tendency towards violence destroy the world again. So women built enclosed cities, leaving men to fight for survival in the wildernesses outside. They would variously be summoned to the walls to contribute their sperm, but were kept in ignorance of their purpose, believing the women to be aspects of the Goddess. Obviously, as other reviewers have pointed out, this is not really feminist literature, just because it has lesbians in it. Still, thoroughly enjoyable for characterization, world-building, and seeing men in the story get treated in some ways, the way they treat us. ( )

I liked it. An old style feminist SciFi. A little predictable but interesting enough to keep me going. ( )

This was a fairly slow moving book. The premise was interesting about a society where the men and women are segregated. The women live in a beautiful city and the men as savages out in the wild. The men come to the wall and have controlled breeding with the women. This is the story of a woman and a man who buck this convention. Not a romance even though my description sounds like it. I guess mostly what it told me was that a society of only men or only women won't really work well. Checks and balances. ( )

Well, I'd say it's weird, a bit depressing, and a bit hopeful. Worth the read. ( )