Aline Boucher Kaplan

You know, this was a really good book. And it's sad that it's forgotten on this site; I picked it up at my local used book store, and the selection was worthwhile. The cover is "fantasy as cover art" but it's really so much more than the typical living in a pre-industrialized world kind of place.

Dara is a mid-1980's tech worker and suburban mom who is out for a run and suddenly finds herself on a very, very strange planet. It is very large, agricultural, and pre-technical in its societal structure. She is brought as a captured stranger to a large settlement where she is taught the native language, introduced to customs, and all the elements of "she's going to go back to her own space and time at some point." Except she doesn't.

What happens next is what distinguishes this book from other late 80's fantasy novels: she and her party are kidnapped then taken to an underground fortress where her predicament is explained to her by space travelers. Seems that the planet had once been heavily populated, until famine and disease took their toll, and now population is hard-pressed to recover. And the Brotherhood, who have taken Dara into their numbers as a spy, have the means to send Dara on a mission into space. And the results are quite unexpected.

Another aspect of the writer's craft was that the characters Kaplan brings into the story don't just disappear onto the previously-read pages. Dara befriends her beast of burden, even naming him Sandy, and Sandy's devotion to his human plays a pivotal role later on. The disgruntled Vethis, who helps in her kidnapping, shows up later as a vengeful sot (I'd like to use a stronger word here). So while this may have been a possible start of a series, it works well as a one-off and deserves some recognition on a book site.… (mehr)