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Overview
Flowerdust is a companion novel to Divine Endurance, set in the same strange and distant future in Southeast Asia, where a matriarchy is both supported and threatened by the mysterious technology of foreigners in great offshore ships. Its heroine is Derveet, a charismatic political rebel leader. A powerful drug, Flowerdust, is causing trouble in the refugee camps, threatening to precipitate revolution too soon. Derveet sets out to stop the spread of the drug and in the process uncovers a secret plot of the mysterious Rulers. And behind the scenes, Divine Endurance and Chosen Among the Beautiful lurk in the shadows.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Jones's fiction (Divine Endurance; White Queen) is notable for richly textured dystopias teeming with exotically different cultures; this new novel, set in Earth's far future, is no exception. The magical robotic doll Chosen Among the Beautiful loves the ``failed'' (because she is infertile) woman Derveet, who is the last of the hereditary rulers of the Garuda family. Together, doll and woman join forces with two ``studs'' (a prince and a clown who, unlike most men, have not been rendered eunuchs), as well as with a sturdy young woman of the privileged class, to penetrate the dangerous Asian Peninsula, find a cache of the nearly mythical hallucinogen flowerdust (which blooms only once every 100 years) and, in the process, expose the mysterious Rulers' plot to wipe humans off the planet for good. The difficulties the band encounters range from social mores involving male/female relationships in a matriarchal society to peasants' planting rice in stagnant fields of salt water, to the resurgence of ancient, deadly diseases. As in Jones's other work, action and plot take a backseat to politics and plays for power, as the author and her characters revel in the victories of love over apathy. (July)Book Details
Published
July 1, 1995
Publisher
Tor Books
Pages
288
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780312858940