Those of you browsing in the paperbacks at your favorite bookstore should pick up a first novel that was missed for 1993, The Rising of the Moon by Flynn Connolly. A future Ireland, gone completely isolationist and totalitarian, is ruled by the Irish Catholic Church.

Women have been returned to their roles of home and baby makers and are under the complete rule of males, especially church leaders, but also their husbands, fathers, brothers, what have you. Although this book shows a few signs of the first novel, and could have been a mere feminist diatribe, Connolly managed to escape both pitfalls fairly nicely.

She escapes because (1) she has a sense of humor, (2) she obviously doesn't hate men in general (only those who want her enslaved), (3) her knowledge of Irish history, culture and language make for engrossing reading, and (4) she doesn't reserve her enemies and heroes for either gender or any creed but shows us the complexity of the world as it is, as it might be.