Daughters of an Emerald Dusk

This book is a wonderful conclusion to the trilogy which began strongly in Daughters of a Coral Dawn and continued weakly in Daughters of an Amber Noon. Like the first, it is written from several voices' perspectives, weaving a complete narrative that is active rather than expositional, which was my biggest problem with the second book. The theme is that the best intentions can have unintended consequences, as the women's utopia created on the planet Maternas gets thrown for a loop by the very odd behavior of its younger generations. It brings in Gaia theory, that is, the theory that a planet is a self-regulating, complex system where living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings to maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet. The introduction of the Unity, the now ten thousand women who settled on Maternas from Earth, has tipped the balance of Maternas and the planet is now fighting back. This book won the Lambda Literary Award for Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror in 2006, and I think it was very deserving.

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