The most outstanding element of Jill Williamson’s Safe Lands Trilogy is its world-building. From the opening pages of Captives, she created two worlds, orbiting no more than a rising mountain apart and yet utterly distinct. In the Safe Lands, all is pleasure and comfort and convenience, greased by the omnipresent wonders of technology. In little…
Tag: Jill Williamson
CSFF Blog Tour: Rebels
At the ripe old age of forty, all the citizens of the Safe Lands are “liberated”, sent by their government into Bliss. No one is certain what, exactly, that means, but Omar and Mason are about to find out. “Find pleasure in Bliss,” the liberator says, but it won’t be easy. Meanwhile, in the Safe…
CSFF Blog Tour: Captives, Outcasts, Rebels
Today we begin the CSFF blog tour of … wait a minute, it’s in my notes … Rebels. Yes, that’s it: Rebels, by Jill Williamson. Rebels is the third and final book of the Safe Lands Trilogy. All the books have titles that consist entirely of a single noun, and there’s a common theme –…
CSFF Blog Tour: Apples and Barrels
Among the true-to-life complexities of Jill Williamson’s Safe Lands series is the diversity of the motley opposition against the Safe Lands government. There are the people of Glenrock and Jack’s Peak, who were dragged into the city and fell into the war quite haplessly. If the Safe Lands had left them alone, they would have…
CSFF Blog Tour: Outcasts
The Safe Lands are many, many things. Safe is not one of them. Visitors must try hard and diligently not to contract the thin plague. Everyone is studiously tracked by the governing authorities, who live by the principle of three strikes and you’re out. Permanently. And those who manage to make it to forty are…
CSFF Blog Tour: Dystopia
Today the CSFF blog tour begins its tour of Outcasts, the second book in Jill Williamson’s dystopian Safe Lands series. Dystopian is in now; you don’t need to look any further than The Hunger Games to know it, and if you look anyway, you’ll see Divergent. YA dystopian is especially in. This has naturally led…
CSFF Blog Tour: Dual Worlds
The back cover of Captives declares it “Teen Fiction”. I would need to think about that. My fourteen-year-old sister showed interest in this book, after she saw me reading it; I warned her off it. Though discreetly handled, the drug addiction and sensual indulgence were more than I felt comfortable with her reading; nor was…
CSFF Blog Tour: Captives
There are two worlds, separate of their own choosing. In the Safe Lands, all is pleasure and comfort and convenience, greased by the omnipresent wonders of technology – except for the thin plague, and until the time of liberation. In little Glenrock, life is harder and the rules are stricter – but there is the…
CSFF Blog Tour: Dystopian Dreaming
In the 1930s, civil war wracked Spain. Under the banner of the Republic, socialists and anarchists and Communists threw in their lot together; the Nationalists – granted force by the military and the Catholic Church – responded to the fears of the middle class. Josef Stalin supported the Republic with arms – always for a…