- Publisher : Ace Trade
- Publish Date: 1998
- Pages: 362
- ISBN-10 : 0-441-00543-8
- Authors: Connie Willis; Cynthia Felice
Promised Land by Connie Willis and Cynthia Felice is the third collaboration between these two authors. I previously reviewed Water Witch and Light Raid here in the last few weeks. I’ve said before that Connie Willis is one of my favorite authors, but I have also said that these collaborations do not meet the quality of her solo works. They are all OK, but none of them is great.
In this one, Delanna Milleflores has returned to the planet of her birth after the death of her mother. She plans to spend no more than a single night here to collect her inheritance before leaving. She hasn’t been back since her mother sent her away to school when she was five years-old. The planet is very rural with it’s own unique laws. She finds she must actually live on her mother’s farm for at least a few months until the circuit court comes around or she will inherit nothing. She also discovers that her father betrothed her to “Sonny” from the farm next door, and in local law, she is technically married to him. She wants nothing to do with this ‘neanderthal’, but being broke, she agrees to go with him back to the farm, but only as an associate and not as his wife.
Promised Land is a science fiction story in that it is set on another planet, but it is a very predictable ‘western’ Romantic Comedy with the big city girl having to deal with the ignorant hick. It’s little twists and ‘surprises’ are telegraphed way in advance. The largest section of this book consists of them taking basically a wagon train 5,000 miles across the planet to get to the farm. Almost nothing of substance happens in this 5,000 miles except reinforcing the tropes that you probably guessed at in the first chapter.
This story is very predictable. It has long stretches where not a whole lot happens. The characters are two-dimensional and not very exciting. If Hallmark was making science fiction stories, they might have made this one. Still, even though I saw it coming, the ending was sweet and made me happy when I got to it.
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