Dreamsnake also explored varying social structures and sexual paradigms from a feminist perspective, and examined themes of healing and cross-cultural interaction.

Scholar Diane Wood wrote that Dreamsnake demonstrated "science fiction's potential to produce aesthetic pleasure through experimentation with linguistic and cultural codes",[5] and author Ursula K. Le Guin called it "a book like a mountain stream—fast, clean, clear, exciting, beautiful".

That story grew into Dreamsnake, and was used unchanged as the first chapter of the novel,[7] which also incorporated two other pieces by McIntyre: "The Broken Dome" and "The Serpent's Death", both published in 1978.

[12] Human society is depicted as existing in what journalist Sam Jordison describes as "low-tech tribalism": the character Arevin, for instance, has never seen a book.

[13][14] The exception is the single city of Center, which has sophisticated technology and is in contact with other planets,[7][12][15] but which has a rigidly hierarchical structure and does not permit outsiders to enter.

After he expresses hesitation, she learns that he impregnated a friend as a result of being improperly taught "biocontrol", and that this led to a difficult relationship with his father.

[26] While checking on her horses, Snake meets Melissa, a girl with a severely burned face who helps the stablemaster, who takes credit for her work.

[43] The archetype of a heroic quest is rewritten: the central figure is a woman,[44] and the challenges faced require healing and care, rather than force, to overcome.

[45] A conventional fictional pattern of a hero being pursued, or waited for, by a female lover, is reversed, as Arevin follows Snake, who receives his support but does not require rescue.

Although she finds a family in Arevin and Melissa, that is not where Snake seeks her "ultimate fulfillment as a woman":[51] her triumph at the story's end comes from her discovery of the dreamsnakes' breeding habits.

[52] Paulsen sees this as a cultural tendency typical of patriarchy, and writes that McIntyre's depiction of an ethical need for wholeness and an understanding of connections between the facets of society is also found in the work of Le Guin and in Doris Lessing's Canopus in Argos series.

[56] These dual meanings are illustrated by the dreamsnake Grass, who in the story is a powerful tool for the healer while also being an object of fear for the desert people.

[59] The depiction of Center, a place of sophisticated technology that has cut itself off from the rest of society, is associated with an exploration of the relationship between "centre and margins, insider and outsider, self and other" that is also found in McIntyre's The Exile Waiting and Superluminal (1983).

Many of her characters attempt to free themselves from shackles of varying kinds, including self-imposed psychological limitations, the challenges created by physical infirmity or appearance, and oppression by other humans.

[64] Other characters who are fettered in some way include North, whose incurable gigantism has led to constant psychotic rage; the "crazy", trapped by his addiction; Gabriel, embarrassed by his failure at controlling his fertility; and Arevin, who feels caught by familial responsibility.

[66] Arevin's initial unwillingness to share his name with Snake, and his explanation of what "friend" signifies to him shows his people's deep-rooted suspicion of strangers; and when he leaves, he seeks to explain to the healers the cultural factors that resulted in Grass being killed.

Their knowledge of Earth biology leads them to erroneously assume creatures mate in pairs; only Snake's circumstances enable her to discover they are triploid.

[71][49] Most of the male characters in Dreamsnake are depicted in a negative light, as with the mayor of Mountainside, the abusive stablemaster, or North; Arevin, who is "gentle and persistent", is in the background for most of the book.

[50] Orson Scott Card described Snake's character as self-sufficient: she has solved her own problems and subverted the expectation that she would be rescued at the novel's end.

[72] Scholar Sarah LeFanu describes Snake as an "older and wiser" version of Mischa, the protagonist of The Exile Waiting, who struggles through much adversity before escaping the city of Center.

[73] Snake's character has been described as an example of feminist reclamation of the archetype of a witch: a person shunned by patriarchal society, redrawn as an image of female power.

[84][b] Dreamsnake has been identified as part of a wave of feminist speculative fiction that emerged in the 1970s and established the position of female authors in a field where they had been marginalized.

[6] Writing in 2011, she elaborated: "Dreamsnake is written in a clear, quick-moving prose, with brief, lyrically intense landscape passages that take the reader straight into its half-familiar, half-strange desert world, and fine descriptions of the characters' emotional states and moods and changes.

"[48] In 1981 science fiction scholar Marshall Tymn commented that it was the "poetically negotiable authenticity" of Snake's adventure that made the book successful, and that it was an enduring work among those that had won Hugo and Nebula awards.

Scholar Diane Wood wrote that the novel showed "science fiction's potential to produce aesthetic pleasure through experimentation with linguistic and cultural codes".

[5] Wood also praised McIntyre's theme of communication across cultures, saying that her style and "vivid characterization" strengthened her message of "greater compassion and understanding", and made the "richly textured novel" a pleasure to read.

Wendell wrote in 1982 that the device was a reversal of a usual fictional trope, and that these reviewers may have been uncomfortable with a female protagonist solving her difficulties on her own.