raising godzillas

Climate of Change by Piers Anthony (adult content warning)

Climate of Change is the fifth and final book in Piers Anthony's Geodyssy series. I've been reading them since Isle of Woman came out, which will be no surprise to those know know my interest in the evolution of man. Not just the nuts and bolts, but what PEOPLE did as they evolved both physically and culturally...how could we have in fact influenced the path of our own evolution through our actions? That's led to me reading everything from popular science such as the Leakey's People of the Lake , to Jean Auel's Children of Earth series. Being familiar with Anthony's work, and this series in particular, I knew that this book would include quite a bit of what I call "paleosmut"; I term I coined thanks to Auel's work. (Although the Geodyssy books go up through modern times and into the near future)
Now, I'll digress a minute and say this. I'm a grown up, and I sometimes read books with sex. And my attitude toward sex in the books I read is...indifferent. I don't seek out books for the sex scenes, and I don't get all holier than thou and refuse to read books with sex. But...I am less indifferent when the scenes involve rape or pedophilia. That will usually have me putting the book down. This time I didn't.
Why? I've read enough of Anthony's work to be familiar with the dirty old man the shines through in almost every book he writes, no matter how oblique or graphic the sex is. He very much favours young (underage, even) nubile women who flaunt their bodies and find gratification not through their own pleasure, but by pleasing men. I stopped reading Xanth years ago, even though that was the more oblique end. However, the Geodyssy series is a more scholarly work that ties into one of my long standing interests. I have to say that the main reason I finished this book was the sense of completion...it's the last book in a series I had devoured, despite the lopsided sex and cannibalism.  (In a series with this much sex, you'd think that being squicked out by penis eating would mean you were talking about oral sex. Nooooo....that would have been a mercy). That, and so I could review it for you. Prehistory and history buffs may still find plenty in the book to enjoy it, but if rape in almost every chapter coupled with a certain amount of incest and pedophilia turns you off, you're better off leaving it on the shelf.

posted by gojirama @ 1:24 PM