L. Timmel Duchamp
Writer, Critic
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Renegadeby L. Timmel Duchamp Renegade, the second of the five-novel Marq’ssan Cycle, opens in August 2077 as the Pacific Northwest Free Zone, having survived the first year of its existence, faces both internal and external challenges. The US’s Security Services has deployed a paramilitary covert action team to capture Kay Zeldin, Security’s most wanted renegade, and destabilize the Zone’s civil order. Nevertheless, Kay ventures outside the Free Zone to search for her spouse and dozens of other scientists who have disappeared, traveling through a war-torn American landscape she barely recognizes. When she encounters Security’s formidable Elizabeth Weatherall, each woman risks all she has become in no-holds-barred, mortal combat. Renegade is a passionate novel of love, trust, and betrayal as well as matters of life and death. It poses vital questions about political morality that resonate powerfully with the most significant issues of our day. With this novel, L. Timmel Duchamp, best known for her “provocative,” “daring” short fiction, moves into new territory, mapping largely invisible connections between how humans negotiate the most intimate and the least intimate of relations. Reviews
"This is easily one of the best science fiction series I've read in
years. Rather than beginning with what is already known, it strips bare the
arbitrary structures of our world (sexuality, gender, government) and
rebuilds them in complex, new structures that are strikingly at odds with
our experience—homosexuality as the norm, at least among the highest
levels, and men willing to forgo sexual pleasure for political power—and
yet also strikingly familiar, with classes or castes, torture, war, the
designation of the unfamiliar as automatically 'terrorist'. The arguments
for the elasticity of sexuality, and against the hierarchical structures of
gender and government are complex, and thoroughly examined—whether you
accept or deny the possibilities and premises presented, Ms. Duchamp does
not take lightly her responsibilities of presenting a believable, if
frightening world; nor does she present a simple dichotomy between men and
women, or between human and Marq'ssan."
(
read the whole review) "[T]hrough the last two thirds of Renegade, [Duchamp] successfully
maintains narrative tension almost solely through the battle of wills
between Weatherall and Zeldin. That Duchamp has also done her homework in
the series' preparation appears in the scary verisimilitude with which she
depicts the intelligence service sub-culture, its methods and their impact
upon detainees. Indeed, the work at times reads much like a concentration
camp narrative (Levi's Survival in Auschwitz or Solzhenitsyn's One Day in
the Life of Ivan Denisovich come to mind) in its lengthy,
semi-philosophical passages about self-preservation. While I have certainly
been guilty of grousing about and skimming through such long-winded
philosophical digressions in other works of SF, with Renegade, I devoured
every word of every page."
"This second installment of Duchamp's (Alanya to Alanya)
projected five-volume saga of postmodern society continues to establish
the breakdown of familiar social structures and the transformation of
human values from a self-serving model to one that is truly
cooperative. Feminist in intent and meticulous in execution, this work
of dystopian fiction belongs in most large sf or speculative fiction
collections."
"Duchamp doesn't need headlines to grab the reader. You do that with good
writing and strong characters. Both are to be found in abundance in
Renegade. And I do mean abundance. This here is a 616 page pulse-pounding
page-turner, based on Duchamp's research into the shenanigans and
evil-doings of our own favorite set of spies, the CIA. What would happen to
our bureaucrat-overseers, were they to be freed into a landscape overrun by
near-civil war, greed and violence? No, this novel is not about current
history or anything resembling it. You do, indeed, get hints of the truly
alien. They're the seeds of change." (read the
whole review)
ISBN: 978-1-933500-04-1 (13 digit)
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