A Million Open Doors

Good book about a culture clash across the stars. Both whimsical and serious with oddball characters – I enjoyed it.
Gotta read more John Barnes.
Solid four stars.

This is the first-person story of a man taken from the southern-romantic society of Nou Occitan to the northern-Puritan society of Caledony. Both societies are going through a transition forced on them by circumstances, and both are shown to have virtues as well as serious defects. I'm reminded of Jack Vance, who delighted in inventing outlandish societies with bizarre laws and customs.

Barnes adds colour by frequently using phrases and sentences of the language of Nou Occitan. I presume this is in fact Occitan, a real language still spoken by some in the Languedoc region of southern France.

A strong minor theme is the role of women in society. He sets out to demonstrate by example that women are people too, that they're just as good as men, that the pretty ones are not necessarily lovable, and that the lovable ones don't need to be pretty. He means well, but he needs to learn more subtlety: his little parables are rather too obvious.

The book is imaginative and fluently written. Barnes has a wide range of interests, taking in science, art, language, society, and economics.

And yet, in retrospect, there's something lacking here. What draws me back to a book is the desire to re-live the author's imagined world and to meet his characters again. So far, it seems to me that Barnes has produced worlds and characters that are quite interesting to meet once, but not sufficiently fascinating or likeable to revisit again and again.