My Favorite Reads: Samaria Series

Alyce who writes the blog At Home With Books has come up with an ingenious new meme. Take a book you read before your started your blog and write a little blurb about it. It doesn't have to be a full review. Just give the book it's time on your blog.

I love this idea because there are so many books I have never talked about on her that changed me in some way. I'm going to do things just a little bit different than Alyce. Instead of giving you the mass-marketed blurb for these books, I'm going to write what I remember of the stories. I think this will show what why it was so important to me that I needed to write about it all these years later. Instead of choosing a book for my first one, I'm choosing a series. I read the Samaria Series by Sharon Shinn several years ago and I read them right in order without reading anything else in between so I remember them more as one story, than several different stories, even though there are different characters in each one.





Samaria is a world far from our own inhabited by the descendants of humans from Earth. Their ancestors fled a dying Earth that was destroyed by our technology. The planet they found to inhabit had the right conditions to live on for the most part, except the weather was so erratic and sometimes dangerous, they needed some way to control it. They spaceship they came in would be able to do this for them, with only occasional commands. These people decided to give up all technology, as they felt this is what led to the destruction of Earth. In order to continue living on the planet, however, the needed to be able to continue communication with the ship. They found a way around this dilemma by creating people who could fly up into the sky within range of the ship microphones and sing the commands in song. Over many generations a religion grew up around this practice. The flying people were angels and the ship, now unknown o both people and angels, became their god. The series opens in the first book in these generations that do not know their own origins. It is about the interaction between angels and humans, what goes wrong when someone begins to suspect there is more to their origins than they believed, and how to continue their simple society when inventors want to bring new gadgets to people.

I was initially drawn to this series because of the overt Old Testament themes. Although I am not religious myself, I love reading about all kinds of religions. Religions that may be derived from those we already know, seem just fascinating. Shinn is an excellent writer. Her imagery is beautiful and her stories take you away to possible worlds, not just fantastical ones. This series led me to read everything she has written. Of course, I'm still working on that part! I am in the middle of The Twelve Houses Series now.