I've been reading sci-fi since high school (not fantasy, thanks) and still enjoy a good space opera (ships hopping from planet to planet with whatever "drive" works). One of the weaknesses of the space opera genre, though, is that the aliens on other planets, even if they look like Jabba the Hutt, often seem either all too human or all too non-human to be of much interest. For example, in the much acclaimed Chanur series, the Hani, who look more-or-less like large cats or small lions, always seem to me just humans who have a few cat-like traits (they are forever flattening their ears).
In Twin-Bred, by contrast, the author has managed to create an alien species, the Tofa, who are just human enough to be of interest, yet just alien enough on a psychological level to be quite riveting, if slightly creepy. One wonders as one reads: just who ARE these creatures and what do they want? There is also at times a sense of threat about them, a feeling that at any moment they may decide they've had enough of humans and will do something about it. The author, by the way, has found a nice semantic trick for carving out a distinctive Tofa personality. Instead of giving them a strange accent, she simply causes them to speak very formally. They use large words where simple ones would do and seem never to use contractions. It works.
The setting for the novel is the planet Tofarn, which is co-inhabited by humans and the Tofa. Humans, however, are the newcomers. It is unclear exactly when they arrived on Tofarn, but it was long enough ago that they celebrate Landing Day.
The core problem is that humans and Tofa have great difficulty communicating. Neither can quite master the language, let alone the psychology, of the other species. As a result, they have a lot of misunderstandings -- the kind of misunderstandings that seem to threaten the entire enterprise of humans staying on Tofarn. Mara, the protagonist of the novel, comes up with a possible solution. Herself a twin whose brother was lost in utero, she theorizes that if human mothers and Tofa mothers carry twins to term -- one human, one Tofa -- the bonding between the twins in utero will make it easier for them to learn the other's language and to communicate in general. Then, when they grow up, they can be sent out to mediate disputes between the two species.
The novel chronicles the experiment, following the various sets of human/Tofa twins from infancy through their teenage years. Does it work out as planned? Sort of and sort of not. But you need to read the novel to find out.
The main characters are well developed. A small pick is that there were too many children, both human and Tofa, to follow easily. But that flaw was overcome, at least for me, by the fact that I did come to identify emotionally with several of the children, including both humans and Tofa.
The author also has a sense of humor. The Tofa, for example, become upset when humans display the color blue. The humans assume that blue has some bad connotation for the Tofa. When I found out the real reason that the display of blue upsets the Tofa, I laughed out loud.
One of the things I wondered about as I read was why the Tofa put up with humans occupying their planet, and why the humans decided to land there in the first place, knowing another intelligent species was already there. Perhaps there will be a prequel that explains all of that.
The novel can also be read, of course, as a rumination on the conflicts and misunderstandings that occur between cultures when they meet, whether via peaceful immigration or conquest. It can also be read as a rumination on the successes and failures of the mediational movement in resolving legal disputes -- "if we can all just understand each other better, we can all get along." Well, maybe. The author is a lawyer, and I wondered as I read how much much experience she has had with mediation as a method of dispute resolution and how much that factored into the writing of Twin-Bred.
In any case, Twin-Bred was a fun read, and I look forward to learning more about the Tofa via either prequel or sequel.
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Top reviews from other countries
J Bryden Lloyd
Recommended Read. Very Good!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 3, 2012Marketlady
Every now and then I read a really good book and this is one of the best.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 15, 2011