Ring of Swords - Hardcover

Arnason, Eleanor

3.9

389 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312855184 ISBN 13: 9780312855185

Publisher: Tor Books, 1993

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Eleanor Arnason's A Woman of the Iron People "will inevitably and appropriately be compared to the work of Ursula K. Le Guin," said Locus. It won both the Mythopoeic Award and one of the first annual James Tiptree Jr. Awards, and received widespread review attention.
Ring of Swords takes place on a larger canvas, the entire civilized galaxy in the 22nd century. For nearly fifty years, humanity has been in conflict with a spacefaring race of warlike humanoid aliens, the only advanced and intelligent race thus far encountered in the exploration of space. Humans hope to avoid interstellar war with this enigmatic race, and have set up the first diplomatic talks with them on an isolated and strategically unimportant planet.
Biological researcher Anna Perez has a grant to study the huge, jellyfishlike aliens who live in the seas on this far planet. As the talks begin, she learns that the alien diplomats have a translator, Nicholas Sanders, who to the astonishment of all is the first human turncoat. Anna becomes involved in a plot to kidnap him.
So begins a story of deepening conflict, complicated by racial and sexual roles, attitudes toward aggression, and misunderstood customs haunted by the spectre of an unimaginable war, a complex tale of the future that confirms Eleanor Arnason's place among the leading SF writers of the decade.

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About the Author:

Eleanor Arnason was born in New York City in 1942. Her mother, Elizabeth Hickcox Yard, was a social worker who grew up in a missionary community in western China. Her father, Hjorvar�dur Harvard Arnason, was the son of Icelandic immigrants and an art historian. She grew up in New York, Chicago, London, Paris, Washington DC, Honolulu, St. Paul, and Minneapolis. She received a BA in art history from Swarthmore College and did graduate work at the University of Minnesota, before quitting to learn about life outside art museums and institutions of higher learning. She made her first professional sale in 1972 while living in the Detroit inner city. Since then she has published six novels and over fifty works of short fiction. Her fourth novel, A Woman of the Iron People (2001), won the James Tiptree, Jr. award for gender-bending science fiction and the Mythopoeic Society Award for adult fantasy. Her fifth novel, Ring of Swords (1995), which is now an Heirloom Books reprint, won a Minnesota Book Award. Since 1994 she has devoted herself to short fiction. Her story “Dapple” won the Spectrum Award for GLBT science fiction and was a finalist for the Sturgeon Award. Other stories have been finalists for the World Fantasy, Hugo, and Nebula Awards, and for the Sturgeon and Sidewise Awards. Her collection Big Mama Stories, from Aqueduct Press in 2013, was on the Tiptree award honor list. Her 2017 collection, Hwarhath Stories: Transgressive Tales by Aliens (also from Aqueduct), was on the Tiptree award honor list and nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. She lives in Minnesota and is currently a full time writer. Her interests include politics, economics, bird-watching, and hanging out in local coffee shops.

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