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Books like Freehold

Freehold

As others have said: this book was deeply cliched, lazily written, and inexpertly welded to a political manifesto; at best, it's "bubblegum" sci-fi. I read it for the explosions and space battles, and even then it disappointed several times.For one thing, there aren't any space battles till well into the second half of the novel. The first half is entirely consumed with the main character (a tall, leggy, gorgeous blonde who doesn't know she's attractive) escaping from Earth; most of this, however, takes the form of a political tract against The Evilz Of Big Guvvermint and The Awesomeness Of Freehold, the Libertarian nudity-tolerant utopia she runs to. There follow endless pages of Kendra marveling at everyone's firearms, sampling freely-sold hallucinogenic drinks, and learning to "relax" in the nude around her new boyfriend (the strong, manly military officer and ace pilot who lives next door) and girlfriend (a petite Asian courtesan with a nonstop libido) -- yep, she randomly becomes bisexual, presumably so the author could write a bunch of cheesy, gratuitous threesome-scenes. I'm not opposed to threesome setups, but the writing for this was as lazy and clueless as the rest of the book, resulting in Kris spending about ten seconds contemplating her new interest in women, and lines like "your body is so sexy"... Seriously.For another, all of this is frequently interrupted by pages-long explanations of how Freehold's system works and how wonderful it is. (Personally, I spent it racking up a count of how many branches the "small" government of Freehold had. There's an awful lot of them.) This includes one gem about how their military cuts its costs in half by selling off used equipment to the highest bidder, no questions asked. Yes, they know they're quite likely supplying terrorists on other planets, but those terrorists are probably going to attack Earth, not Freehold, and the *really important* thing is that their military budget is reduced!This book could have been an entertaining, but not memorable, hour's read if only some wise editor had cut out 200 pages of political harangue, and perhaps required some more effort expended on the war with Earth and the fallout on the characters. As it stands, the traumas they suffer play out as mere afterthoughts -- particularly egregious in the case of Marta, who is viciously gang-raped. The rushed and superficial handling made it feel over-the-top, done for shock value rather than a necessary part of the plot... Especially after suffering through Williamson's weak and irrational handwaving over why rape is a nearly unheard-of crime on Freehold. (As another review noted, this came down to "there's a taboo against it for some reason," yet -- given all we're told of how Freehold works, including a legal system that relies almost entirely on provable monetary loss -- by its own logic only a prostitute can be raped.)

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