Gabe S's Reviews > The Fifth Dominion

wanted to like this after all the time I put into these two books but I just found the whole thing banal in the end, full of most of the clichés I started to read these books to avoid. original in a way I guess, Clive's a world builder extraodinaire, but I found the whole ******SPOILER ALERT ****** "men are evil and innately destructive and of course irrationally hate women and are so scared of their reproductive capabilities and capacity to love etc...- only poor, put upon goddesses and their exclusive enclave of women can rule wisely, due of course to the innate holiness of their life giving wombs" to be such a tired old trope - especially since I couldn't care in the slightest about any of the protagonists (except maybe Gentle but even then he was a weak willed idiot, happy in his ignorance most of the time, even while trying to undertake some universe changing mission - a very 'male attitude' I'm sure many 101 students would argue) or their bizarre logic for doing the things they did.

Essentially a very tired old plot line wrapped up in an original setting that takes thousands of pages to get through. I can see why some people cream themselves over this (OMG, he's got a third gender in the book - like, SO transgressive and thot provoking... ad infinitum), but sadly, I'm not one of them. probably came too late to this series for me to feel its as ground breaking as others so obviously do.....