Journey To Zelindar

Hadra Archives #1

by Diana Rivers

Journey to Zelindar Sair is the pampered daughter of an upper-caste family until a brutal gang rape changes her life forever. Abandoned and left for dead, she walks to the ocean to kill herself. Instead she is rescued by the Hadra, wild riding-women with strange powers, women who ride their horses by consent, speak mind-to-mind with each other and are all lovers of women. This is Sair's own tale of her life and adventures among the Hadra, a journey that will finally take her to the fabled city of Zelindar.

Genres: Fantasy, LGBT, Lesbian, Fiction, Queer, Lesbian Fiction, Feminism

301 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Diana Rivers is a lifelong writer/artist who lives in a house designed by her and built entirely by women’s hands. Her best known work is The Hadra Series, which channeled itself into her life and continues to spur stories. She lives in Arkansas and remains an advocate for peace, justice and ecology.

(from http://www.bellabooks.com/Bella-Autho...)

Reviews

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

i loved this book and the hadra series so much. i read 'journey to zelindar' first (though, chronologically, it is the third in the series but it was written first). i read 'daughters of the great star' next (it's first chronologically, written second). i'm ordering them through interlibrary loan and since they don't come quickly, i get to enjoy the anticipation of their arrival.

i love the women, the characters, their special powers as daughters of the great star and their joining with the Witches and the travelling people to learn from each other and support each other and to face the threats from their culture and to begin to make a life together as tribes of loving, powerful women.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!!

[rara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Apparently the "Goddess" blesses the hadra with children only if they have frenzied, drug induced orgies with multiple men. I guess artificial insemination is out of the question for the supposedly "lesbian" hadra.

[Dannica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to read this bc I haven't read a whole ton of older lesfic. This book was published in 1987, so not exactly ancient, but still older than my usual. And it's kind of obscure so I was delighted to see my library system had it. Anyways, it's kind of a lesbian feminist utopian fantasy sort of thing, featuring a tribe of horse-riding women (though they aren't nomads, like I thought at first) who live without men and love one another and possess magical powers through the Goddess.

So you get a lot of peaceful utopia type passages with our MC, Sair, living with the Hadra tribe and learning how they live, forming relationships with a couple women and having casual sex with one or two others, and having all sorts of spiritual experiences. On the other hand, the Hadra exist in stark contrast to the rest of this book's universe--Sair herself initially comes from a highly regulated patriarchal society, and the book begins with her first being married off to an unwanted husband, and then being the victim of a gang rape, and then traveling to the ocean in hopes of committing suicide. I was relieved that the darkest part of this book was over fairly quickly, but the repercussions continue throughout: Sair definitely has some form of PTSD and is only slowly recovering from her trauma, and though the Hadra may live in peace and love, the rest of the world? Not so much.

Anyways. A couple spare thoughts:

-I liked Sair and Tarl's relationship a lot, but this book definitely is no romance. It's an open relationship, often tempestuous, and at the end seems like it might be on the verge of breaking--though this is treated more as the way things go sometimes than as some sort of tragedy. Anyways Tarl is my kind of girl.

-Utopian literature kind of gets to you sometimes bc of the assumption that if you just had the perfectly formed society, people in the society would be perfect. (One reason it's easier to write dystopian literature, I suppose.) Journey to Zelindar only partly falls into this trap. It definitely shows the Hadra as fallible people who still argue and have their differences. And sometimes makes fun of the Hadra's culture a little--for example, their vegetarianism. Still, I can't help but think the Hadra seem a little too good to be true. But it's nice to imagine such things.

-I liked a lot of the more minor characters. Zarmell, who's something of a cougar. Quadra, the Hadra's councillor. Halli, Sair's first lover. Yima, Lar, Sharven... just generally a good cast of characters overall.

-I totally thought they were going to have that epic battle against the Zarn and use their Kersh to kill him but I guess I should be glad they didn't have to? I'm not convinced they won't have to do it eventually, though.

Overall, a good book. I will read more by Diana Rivers at some point.

[Ren · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5, rounded down.

In Journey to Zelindar, we follow a woman, Sair, born into patriarchy as she escapes and is adopted into a lesbian separatist tribe. It focuses on the injustice of sexual violence and the scars inflicted by male violence, but also on the healing power of female community. The author's conviction comes across in every paragraph, as well as her obvious experience with real-world lesbian separatist communities. All the characters are written realistically and lovingly, and I feel like I could meet them all in Michigan.

Now, all that praise aside, there was one very stark and disturbing issue with this book. That is the casual and accepted pedophilia within this otherwise feminist community. It is only mentioned a couple times, but it is incredibly jarring each time. Characters laugh and joke about one woman, Zarmell, and her interest in young girls. At the end of the book, Sair's main love interest is implied to have taken up with a thirteen year old girl. For a book that focuses on the horror of sexual violence, the inclusion of this is alarming. It undercuts what would otherwise be an incredibly thoughtful, nuanced, and feminist story. I can't imagine what Rivers meant by it.

[MejraThea · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. I got about 1/3 of the way through this book. It started out with an interesting premise. But to be honest, it lost me with the repeated casual sex with multiple partners in a row, calling each other "sister" and "mother" and yet fucking, left and right. This may have had an interesting plot, that I do not know. Polyamory just isn't for me and I couldn't keep going. Despite this, I give this book two stars -- though it was not at all my style, it is undeniable that the author writes well.

Also, though men can be capable of doing terrible things, I can't say that I appreciate the need to make an "all women" society, essentially demonizing one half of our species as not being good enough to be part of society -- whether in the book or in real life, as this author has sought to do. It continued to put a bad taste in my mouth.

[Becko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoying this series thoroughly. I like the way the author weaves explanations of the new world into the story with a purpose. Even the writing of the story has a reason connected with the world. I could not decide whether I like the main character or not, but that made Sair that much more interesting.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorites read in 2019:
https://hollograms.blogspot.com/2020/...