There are many Sharers who are not wise in the least, who are hot-headed, blood-thirsty, or narrow-minded. The original colonists created a society that prizes consensus and pacifism, and those are the priorities they passed on to their descendents. But the book doesn't seem to present being wise as the natural extention of being an all-female society. The Sharers are all female, and they are, as a group, very wise. I've seen other reviews that decry this book as gender-essentialist lesbian separatism, and I have to disagree. Can the pacifists of Shora find a way to understand, and be understood by, their invaders? But they share their solar system with Valedon, a feudal, warlike world. Their highest goal is to strengthen the ecological and social web that ties each creature to another. Although they have incredibly advanced biological science, they try to change as little as possible about the natural ecology of Shora, even though it means losing friends and loved ones to vast monsters that roam the ocean. Sharers, as the descendents of the colonists call themselves, strive to live in balance with each other and their world. The humans who colonized it chose to reshape themselves, instead of terraforming the planet.
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