The Waterdancer's World — L. Timmel Duchamp

Humans have been struggling to live on Frogmore for almost five centuries, adapting themselves to punishing gravity and the deadly mistflowers that dominate its ecology. Financier Inez Gauthier, patron of the arts and daughter of the general commanding the planet's occupation forces, dreams of eliminating the mistflowers that make exploitation of the planet's natural wealth so difficult and impede her father's efforts to crush the native insurgency. Fascinated by the new art-form of waterdancing created by Solstice Balalzalar celebrating the planet's indigenous lifeforms, Inez assumes that her patronage will be enough to sustain Solstice's art even as she ruthlessly pursues windfall profits at the expense of all that has made waterdancing possible. Carolyn Ives Gilman, author of Dark Orbit and Halfway Human, writes of the novel: "Timmel Duchamp specializes in rule-breaking fiction, and The Waterdancer's World lives up to her reputation. This passionate book explores the interdependence of art and oppression on a vividly imagined colonial world. It is as challenging and ethically complex as anything Duchamp has written."