For the Sake of Grace

I could certainly see why this story is considered "soft" sf, perhaps that's why reading it, I considered it one of the most accessible to me, as someone with little previous sf experience. The way I read it, the author made everything seem very "middle east" from the names (ban instead of bin, for example, but close enough) to the treatment and view of women (mother 'disobeying' her male child, discouraging "foolish young girls from creating difficulties for their households" 219, the "Women's Discipline Unit," etc...). This made it all very easy to visualize, even though we are on another planet at a different time.

There are sf elements (space travel, farming on Earth for another planet, their "com" systems, e.g.), but they are not the focus in this story and the whole Poetry, scribes, costumes, speaking in couplets, observation of ritual business made it almost seem like a really old story, not necessarily futuristic. The author focused more on familial relations, the dynamics between husband & wife, father & daughter, father & sons, brother & sister, aunt & niece. She also obviously focused on the treatment of women throughout and especially with the ending of Jacinth becoming a Seventh Level Poet, so far above her brothers and well above her father, who couldn't even get past the first part of the test. It really showed how ridiculous it is to lump all members of a gender into a certain category because they are one gender or the other and how silly it was that Khadilh was running the household and supreme master of all around him with probably the lowest IQ. I also thought Jacinth's request at the end was very fitting, with nary a word directed to her father but in the form of a command to ensure Grace understands what she has accomplished. That's about all that he deserved; after all, she could've been anyone in there speaking, he didn't know her from a hole in the ground.

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