What can I say other than groshing ooma, absolutely groshing

okay, maybe I can add just a bit more....
This book came very close to ending up on my "did not finish" list.
If it hadn't come with such high recommendations and fervent insistence that I read it, I would have given up early.
But I'm glad I didn't.
I've come off of reading space operas with sweeping epic story lines. Or at least sci fi books where the fate of worlds of even universes rests on the leading character.
This book is different. It's almost more of a slice of life book. There's a little more going on than just that, but large parts of it are just the protagonist (who isn't named) doing their day to day thing. There isn't some big evil world ending enemy. And the people in this book live sheltered lives where suicide can be either a hobby and a way to get a new body. So their lives aren't generally in mortal danger. So in the first page sof this book I found myself thinking "blah blah blah, you're spoiled, immortal, and bored... I get it.. and I don't care".
And then a little deeper in and i was thinking "okay, I care a little".
That's when I just kinda relaxed, and stopped expecting anything momentous to happen and just enjoyed.
If you can relax and just enjoy the story as it unfolds at a leisurely pace, this story will pull you in over time. And it has what I thought was a nice satisfying conclusion.

Oh, and the slang is jarring at first and feels forced in the beginning. But by the end it feels natural, and it actually plays a part in the story. And as a bit of evidence on how well it works, I'm writing this review a bit over a week after finishing the book and i'm still finding myself using the slang terms from the book in my inner thoughts, how zaradann is that oomas? ( )

One of the books I read in 2010, when I got horribly behind on reviewing and recording books. I had read a large excerpt from this book in my Gendering class in college and always intended to find the book and read the rest of it. I finally did. Many interesting ideas about gender, society, the value of work and the land. ( )

Love love the world building, but it is strangely heteronormative for such a gender fluid society.

SPOILER, MILD

ends with some Nice Guy bullshit that I could really have done without. ( )

I read Tanith Lee’s Biting the Sun in three days. I read a little bit one evening and again the next, intending to carry on like that, but I really got into it and spent the larger part of the next day finishing it. I couldn't help myself - it's a really absorbing read.

I believe that I read in some article online that Tanith Lee is not a great believer in genres, but if I had to pigeonhole this I suppose I’d call it science fiction.

I suppose the idea of an ‘utopian’ city where everyone lives in pampered idleness is not at all original, but I doubt if many paint it as vividly or imaginatively as Lee. One of her great strengths is her ability to paint vivid and colourful images in the reader's mind.

The story concerns a heroine (basically a heroine – as so often with Lee, gender boundaries are fluid) who doesn’t fit in this utopia, and how she continually causes problems and eventually gets banished to the outside desert, and her life out there. I suppose it can be read as an allegory for the journey from dependent adolescence to self-reliant adulthood.

Obviously, from the above, I think this a very good novel, but the thing that is really astonishing me is that Lee can be so extraordinarily prolific an author and yet, as far as I’ve read so far, maintain her standards of quality and inventiveness. Good stuff. ( )

I really enjoyed this. I wish I could write articulate reviews....
This book was awesome on so many levels. ( )