#71 Carnival by Elizabeth Bear

This is a stand alone novel. The action takes place on New Amazonia, a matriarchal world being courted by Old Earth and the Coalition. They ask for the diplomats to be "gentle" males. The Coalition sends a pair of old lovers to negotiate with the planet and give them the task to discover the source of their apparently limitless clean power supply. The thought of the craziness of the Coalition ever coming to fruition in the world is very scary to say the least. I enjoyed the book and I hope that someday there will be more books set in this universe even if it doesn't follow anyone from this book.