https://bnagasravika.wixsite.com/sravikareviews/post/book-review-dream-snake-by-... ( )

I first read the novella "Of Mist, And Grass, And Sand," on which Chapter 1 of this book is based, many years ago and enjoyed it, but have only just got round to reading the novel. So I was quite surprised to realise, once you get past that section, that the book is actually post-apocalyptic science fiction, although the opening could have belonged to a fantasy.

The lead character, Snake, is a healer on her one year probation following the completion of her training. She has gone off to the desert, where healers seldom go, to help the tribesfolk there, and been asked to heal a young boy dying of a tumour. Like all healers, she carries three snakes: a rattler, called Sand - which we later learn has been bioengineered to produce various vaccines in its venom that can be harvested and then used to immunise people, a white cobra called Mist, which can destroy tumours with its venom, and a dreamsnake, which can give hallucinogenic dreams to ease the passing of anyone the healer cannot help.

In the opening chapter, Snake underestimates the tribesfolk's fear of snakes, and her dreamsnake is killed. This is a disaster as she cannot now help the dying and feels she must return home to the healers. The dreamsnakes are rare, do not breed well and cannot be cloned - as we learn later in the book, the healers are able to perform genetic engineering, although they lack the kind of equipment which would let them examine the dreamsnakes more closely and perhaps solve the problem. For the dreamsnakes are not earth animals.

Over the course of the novel, Snake travels from one place to another, meeting different communities which each have their own ways of life, morals, and so on. One place is Center, an odd sealed-off community which preserves more advanced technology predating the nuclear war which evidently took place centuries before, and whose inhabitants are in contact with offworlders. There are people on other planets, as is mentioned from time to time, and some might be colonists from Earth, but there are also definitely aliens, as the dreamsnakes and certain flora and fauna Snake later discovers are all alien.

Her original intent to go home and tell the healers what happened to her dreamsnake is waylaid, first by a request to help someone who has had a serious accident, and then by the fulfilment of a promise to travel to Center and request that they help either with technology or new dreamsnakes. On the way, she stays a while at a town in the mountains where, despite things being fine on the surface, child abuse of various kinds is transpiring.

The story is slow and meandering and switches between two viewpoints, since Arevin, a man who is introduced in chapter 1, eventually travels to the healer community and subsequently goes in search of Snake. He and Snake had an instant attraction, but at the time he didn't feel he could abandon his responsibilities. There is good character development and scene setting throughout, though some of the situations are a bit odd. Presumably, the healer community is a utopia of sorts, because issues such as sexual abuse and drug addiction seem to take Snake totally by surprise as if she has never encountered them before. Since this is the first time she has left home, we must assume neither problem is known in her own community, though you would have expected the older healers to have warned her. She therefore tends to blunder into situations and be beset continually by problems, some of which are of her own making.

The post-apocalyptic background isn't entirely convincing, partly because it is never made clear how the aliens fit in. They have left domes behind which are too tough to get inside - except one in the final sequence which is 'broken', apparently by a superweapon - in which alien flora and perhaps fauna reside. It isn't clear what the community she comes upon at the end actually subsist on, or what their dreamsnakes eat for that matter. The story almost begs a sequel in which the healers go there with an armed escort to gather a lot more snakes for a proper gene pool than the few Snake manages to escape with.

Given the alien origin and rarity of the dreamsnakes, it isn't clear why they became so crucial to the healers, and why the notion of genetically engineering snakes to produce the various vaccines etc arose in the first place. And the geography is hard to envisage - certainly where the desert at the start is in relation to the healer community in the mountains, and where Center and the mountain town she stays at, and the later location in the mountains all fit in.

I like some aspects of the story, such as the mutual respect between sexual partners (with the exception of the abuser, of course) though the fact that people are taught to bio-control their fertility is a bit farfetched. The secondary protagonist, Arevin, is not allowed to detract from Snake's autonomy - she single-handedly deals with the punishing situation at the end of the book, and I liked the relationship between her and her adopted daughter. However, I found the whole "point" of Center confusing - I realise that the person she dealt with there freaked out when he saw her companion's burns, thinking they were genetic damage of some kind, but even before that, he had started ranting at Snake in a deranged and nonsensical manner as soon as she mentioned that the healers wanted to clone the snakes, as if cloning was a huge offence. There seems to be a massive backstory which is never disclosed and I found that a bit frustrating. I've since learned that another novel of McIntyre's, The Exile Waiting, is set in the same future so maybe some answers will be provided there, but have to judge the current novel on its own merits as it is not the first part of a trilogy, for example, and should stand on its own. So for me the book balances out at 3 stars only. ( )

3.5 maybe. I *liked* this, though the writing was a little weird and detached. ( )

My expectations aren't high for a book that starts by introducing a wandering healer with magical snakes, but I truly enjoyed this. It stuck the landing way better than I expected. Could have left the chapter or two that covers 'birth control by thinking real hard' on the cutting room floor though. ( )

McIntyre, Vonda N. Dreamsnake. 1978. Introduction: Our Hero by Nisi Shawl. Afterword by McIntyre, 2009. Open Road, 2021.
Dreamsnake grew from an award-winning 1973 short story begun in the Clarion Writers Workshop. The novel itself won Hugo and Nebula Awards and has been hailed as an icon of second-wave feminist science fiction. I am happy to say that it does not read like a museum piece. It is set in a slowly recovering post-nuclear war society that sends its healers on the road and uses genetically modified snakes to deliver medications. Fear of mutation has encouraged the development of efficient biofeedback for birth control. Its heroine, a healer named Snake, still jumps off the page in a way that makes one wonder why Hollywood hasn’t had a go. Solid 4 stars. ( )