Inevitably, despite Berenice’s best efforts, Valedon ends up sending a military force to subdue Shora, headed by her fiance Realgar, and the second half deals with the fallout from and resistance to this occupation, and its ultimate effects on both societies.įeminist Future: The Sharers’ entire existence relies on immense knowledge of and adaptation to the ocean world around them, but the “men = technology, women = nature” stereotype is undermined by their reliance on advanced biological engineering to maintain their existence. The first is a slow build introducing the characters, their worlds, and the conflicts between them: Sharers Merwen and her daughter Lystra a Valan called Berenice who is part of the first family to re-establish contact with Shora and a Valan boy called Spinel, who undertakes an “apprenticeship” with Merwen and becomes the lens through which we learn about more alien aspects of Sharer culture.
However, most of the book’s narrative and effort is expended on fleshing out Shora itself.
We get a couple of interesting snapshots of Valedon’s caste-based society, and its internal conflicts and interactions with the galactic patriarchy.
The million inhabitants of Shora have only recently been “rediscovered” by Valedon, and have escaped notice of this remnant government, but the situation is not going to last: the representative of the Patriarch (did I mention that the ruler of the galactic order is literally called "The Patriarch"?) is due to visit, and thanks to increasing trade between the two planets, he’s finally putting Shora on his agenda. Shora, a completely ocean-covered planet, is in a binary system with Valedon, a “normal” world the latter is one of the ninety-odd members of a galactic order decimated by a long-ago calamity, which has led the remnants of humanity to adopt strict prohibitions on certain types of technology, notably nuclear power. A Door Into Ocean Įxecutive Summary: This is the story of a planet of women, the Sharers of Shora, and what happens when they come back into contact with a patriarchal society after thousands of years of isolation.
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