A Review by Ursula K. Le Guin

"This trenchant feminist fantasy-satire mixes elements of Animal Farm, Rhinocerus and The Handmaid's Tale.... Imagination and absurdist humor mark this book throughout, and emshwiller is engaging even when most savage about male-female relationships."

"An inspired feminist tale... warm, compassionate and refreshingly jargon-free... a gentle exposition of human folly that nevertheless makes some tough points about the inequalities between the sexes.... A wise and funny book."

"I have always thought that Carol had the most inventive mind in science fiction. It is not possible to summarize her work as a whole nor describe it satisfactorily piece by piece, but it does all have a particularly tough kind of feminity that appeals to me very much. Her heroines generally rise to the occasion and they do this with only their courage and their imagination and they do this in ways no one else would. And yet, as a reader, you always liked her heroines just fine before they were heroic, so there is a bit of sadness there, that the world is the sort of world that forces nice, ordinary people into heroism. Other writers can be funny one moment and heart-breaking the next, but Carol is routinely both at once and she makes it look effortless or accidental."

"Venus Rising is wonderfully Emshwillerian: lyrical in its language, delightfully idiosyncratic in its thinking, filled with laughter and strange pain."