Here we are, 2021 and CAR-T engineered cells are all the rage for curing cancer, which is essentially the same idea. It's pretty fucking brilliant for 1978, I have to say. So the premise is that this woman, nicknamed 'Snake,' is a healer, who uses her specially bred snakes and healer training to basically create individually tailored vaccines and cures.

It reminded me a bit of Carol Nelson Douglas' Six of Swords series. If I sound dismissive, it's only because I grew up in heavily genderized sci-fi and it appears that I can't even revisit it for long. It's always about being a biological and gendered girl in a structure that resembles the Quest of the (Male) Hero. In the 1970s, it also includes sexual inequity, possibly insta-love with a man who struggles with women's equity, and quite probably about rape. What's Women's Sci-Fi, you ask? Oh, it's simple stuff it's the stuff that's about being a female and owning (female) power. It turns out that my feeling was not inaccurate the book sprung out of an award-winning novellete. Not to mention the novel-length 'plot' feels a great deal a series of short stories strung together into a novel. But some of the responsibility needs to go to McIntyre for writing what 100% seems like Women's Sci-Fi, 1970s-Style. Why? I fully admit much of it is me, in this particular mood in my life at this moment.

Order Vonda N.I abandoned this at about page 183. To find out what other people had to say about this book and to purchase it click on the link at the bottom of the page to Amazon Books. I was sad when this book ended I didn't want to leave Snake and her world. McIntyre portrays her characters so well that you feel like you really know them. Through her quest for the dreamsnake that her people value so dearly Snake learns that with or without her dreamsnake she is still a healer. Fearing that her people won't accept her back with out her dreamsnake she sets out to go to the center where supposedly the dreamsnakes come from. When she is called to help a sick child she misreads the people and loses her most important snake her 'dreamsnake'. Snake starts her journey into the desert with three healer snakes. Snake the healer the main character in this book is so human (for want of a better word) instead of being perfect like so many other characters in books like this. Wow, where to start with this book it had my attention from the very first page and kept it all the way through I couldn't turn the pages fast enough.

Dreamsnake vonda mcintyre