Ammonite by Nicola Griffith

I bet there are people out there who, when they open a book and see a map, get really excited. I bet there are people out there who, when they open a book and see a glossary of terms and characters, get really excited.  I am not one of those people. I frequently wish maps were in the middle of books, just when someone's drawing a map in the ashes of a campfire, that map should show up.  I think a family tree should also sometimes show up when appropriate, but only in the context of the story. When I open a book and this is the information I see right away, I'm overwhelmed. This was the case when I opened Ammonite by Nicola Griffith. I just skipped through all that information and I didn't really ever need it, so I guess I'm glad it's there for the people who really want it, but I don't think you should let it scare you off.

The book tells the story of Marghe, a forensic anthropologist who travels to the planet Jeep to do something. That something is a bit mysterious to me (test a vaccine? learn about the planet's natives? save a fellow officer who is lost? because she's bored in her current teaching job?  because...well, there are lots of reasons, I guess), but that's okay because that pretty much represents most of my reaction to the book - vaguely lost, but hanging on enough to keep going.

(Parenthetical tangent: We are watching Altered Carbon on Netflix and I'm not kidding when I say I have to stop each episode at least once to ask my husband what is going on?  I swear I'm not stupid, but my entertainment choices really have me questioning the state of my brain sometimes.)

Anyway, centuries earlier, Jeep had been settled by the Company, some interstellar corporate behemoth, but had been abandoned after a virus had ravaged the planet killing all the men.  Now there are only women on the planet. How do they live without men? How do they continue reproducing?  What is going on on Jeep?

It was slow going at first, but then I really was invested in Marghe's fate. She was kidnapped, escaped, and was had to fight against the Company all at the same time. She was a terrible anthropologist (it was as if she'd done absolutely no research before trudging out to the field), but quickly found her way.  She wasn't perfect and there were times that I wanted to smack her, but I think that was the point.

In a society of all women, there are good women, bad women, smart women, stupid women, friendly women, spiritual women, strong women, emotionally unstable women, and just about every type of woman you would like to see. It wasn't a world in which men were even missed (Marghe was attempting to explain the concept of father, but without men, how can you even explain it?).  Anyway, I don't know if I'd recommend this book. I'd definitely read more Griffith, but this experiment in Jeep was just a bit too convoluted for me to follow as a casual reader. Maybe if I read this three or four or five times, I could figure all the ins and outs, but I don't want to spend that much time with Marghe, so it's probably not going to happen.