Blurb
An epic tale of freedom and slavery, love and war, and the potential futures of humankind tells of a twenty-first century California clan caught between two clashing worlds, one based on tolerance, the other on repression.
Declaration of the Four Sacred Things
The earth is a living, conscious being. In company with cultures of many different times and places, we name these things as sacred: air, fire, water, and earth.
Whether we see them as the breath, energy, blood, and body of the Mother, or as the blessed gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of the interconnected systems that sustain life, we know that nothing can live without them.
To call these things sacred is to say that they have a value beyond their usefulness for human ends, that they themselves became the standards by which our acts, our economics, our laws, and our purposes must be judged. No one has the right to appropriate them or profit from them at the expense of others. Any government that fails to protect them forfeits its legitimacy.
All people, all living things, are part of the earth life, and so are sacred. No one of us stands higher or lower than any other. Only justice can assure balance: only ecological balance can sustain freedom. Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing we call spirit flourish in its full diversity.
To honor the sacred is to create conditions in which nourishment, sustenance, habitat, knowledge, freedom, and beauty can thrive. To honor the sacred is to make love possible.
To this we dedicate our curiosity, our will, our courage, our silences, and our voices. To this we dedicate our lives.
The book cover below includes alt-text.
Content warnings: torture, imprisonment, death, including death of children, rape, gun violence.
Impressions
I enjoyed the book, even though there were some issues that didn’t sit exactly well with me.
First of all, I was surprised how violent it was. Please check content warnings above. There is, of course, nothing wrong with the presence of these themes — I just didn’t expect them. The book tells a story of a solarpunk oasis in a very violent, very dystopian world, and the clash of the two.
I loved the aesthetics of the oasis, the deep love and care that people put into creating and sustaining their way of live, the hard and rewarding work, the communal aspects. I was a bit surprised that everyone there seemed to be bisexual and polyamorous. I like to see different sexualities, non-traditional families and relationships. It was just strange that it was the default and there was no variation, but maybe it was a middle finger to only portraying heterosexual monogamous relationships in media — I don’t know. It's worth noting that homosexuality isn't present either.
I liked the non-violent resistance and non-cooperation. However, maybe it’s because of my own experiences with violent, oppressive systems, but I have trouble believing that it would be successful. I don’t think violent resistance would work either, taking into account what the characters were up against. Skip the rest of this paragraph if you want to avoid spoilers. The soldiers came to commandeer their water for the state, and I don’t see a reason why they wouldn’t kill the whole settlement if they refused to cooperate. Don’t get me wrong, I admire the characters’ strategy, but I think they’d either all end up dead or, more likely, break seeing so many loved ones die.
And then, there is the issue of magic. I’m being a bit nitpicky here, but the idea of using magic alongside actual science and medicine was kind of strange to me. I rolled my eyes at the doctor who refused to wear a mask in the middle of a deadly epidemic there was no cure for because “she protected herself in other ways”, i.e. with the help of magic. Because the world itself is realistic and shows a version of the future, but the magic is quite outlandish (like manipulating electronic devices with brain waves, or using intelligent crystals that refuse to cooperate with the enemy to power the internet), it was a bit grating for me. I also couldn't shake the feeling that the author believed it was possible, which is probably unfair. It took some getting used to, but in the end, I enjoyed the story and was quite engrossed.
I also read the next book in the series, which was actually a prequel set in the sixties and focusing on the counterculture. I won't be reviewing it because it's not really fantasy or sci-fi, so it doesn't fit the blog, but I enjoyed it, even though the main character was annoying. The third book in the series is a sequel to The Fifth Sacred Thing, and I was going to read it, but it wasn't on Kobo where I get my books. I also realized I was quite tired of Starhawk because there is a certain heaviness to her writing — I'm not sure what it is, and I think it's purely subjective, but that's the effect it has on me.
You might like The Fifth Sacred Thing if you are into solarpunk, dystopias, magic, non-violent resistance and don’t mind violence.
You can get the book at Kobo, Barnes&Noble, Apple, Amazon and other bookstores.
The author
Starhawk is an author, activist, permaculture designer and teacher, and a prominent voice in modern Goddess religion and earth-based spirituality. She is the author or coauthor of thirteen books, including the classics The Spiral Dance and The Fifth Sacred Thing. Her latest is the newly published fiction novel City of Refuge, the long-awaited sequel to The Fifth Sacred Thing.
Starhawk directs Earth Activist Training, (www.earthactivisttraining.org), teaching permaculture design grounded in spirit and with a focus on organizing and activism. “Social permaculture”—the conscious design of regenerative human systems, is a particular focus of hers.
She lives on Golden Rabbit Ranch in Western Sonoma County, CA, where she is developing a model of carbon-sequestering land use incorporating food forests and savannahs, planned grazing, and regenerative forestry.
She travels internationally, lecturing and teaching on earth-based spirituality, permaculture, and the skills of activism. Her web site is www.starhawk.org.
Featured image by Παῦλος.