This book's great potential floundered hard, if you'll pardon the pun. This speculative-fiction blend of fantasy and science ultimately failed on every front, despite getting off to a strong start. Tepper often starts well, with strong characters, interesting plots, and really delicious world b...
I really thought that I had not read this before, so I was quite surprised as the story unfolded how much came back to me. In some ways this is because this is a classic Tepper and so many of the familiar themes are there for those who know her work. In others it is simply why I enjoy rereading b...
Tepper is new to me. Not only new, but before I read Grass, I had not even heard of Tepper. I had no preconceptions, I had no idea of the plot - completely fresh.The result completely blew me. Grass sets up a complex society involving a main religion, a controlling empire, and a rogue planet d...
Were the Angel of the Lord to appear and say to me: ‘The wrath of the Lord waxes great against the works of American fantasy authors of the second half of the 20th century, and before a night has passed and a day it is His will that they be destroyed utterly, and expunged from the memory of Manki...
One thing I hate about many books is that they often starts off with flying colors with amazing prose and plotting, making me think it's going to be my new favorite book. And then they usually glided, or stumbled, down into disappointments by the end of the story, when the author clearly ran out ...
Sheri S. Tepper's "Raising the Stones" is sometimes billed as the second part of her "Arbai" trilogy, but that's a misnomer, as this book easily stands on its own. It shares the same universe as its predecessor, "Grass," but is otherwise set one thousand years later and with very few exceptions h...
♥ || Twitter || ♥ || Facebook || ♥ || Booklikes ♥ || Pinterest || ♥Once you make it on to my auto-buy list as an author, it's pretty hard to get off. I am an incredibly picky reader, though, so making the list in the first place is, shall we say, difficult. (And climbing Mt. Everest is just a wal...
Unlike everyone else in her highborn family, fourteen-year-old Jinian of Stoneflight Demesne has no Talent. While her brothers have true Talents such as flying, mind-reading, and shape-shifting, Jinian's only minor ability is as a Footseereven blind-folded, her feet can follow the Old Road as it...
When Marianne's parents died, leaving control of their fortune to her feared older brother, she struggled to make her way as a student in America - and her old home began to seem as unreal as a fairy tale, her childhood there as distant as a dream . . . Until the Magus came to claim her, and the ...
This sequel to Marianne, the Madame, and the Momentary Gods finds Marianne honoring a most unusual deathbed request from her great aunt. It seems a matchbox needs to be returned to its owner, the mysterious Cattermune. But how will she find this elusive being?
‘The bizarre events that have been occurring across the United States seem to have no bearing on Benita Alvarez-Shipton’s life. that is, until she is approached by a pair of aliens asking her to transmit their message of peace to the Powers That Be in Washington.Her obligation does not end once t...
There's something to be said for reaching for a hammer when perhaps a more delicate instrument might do the job nicely.I never read anything by Sheri Tepper before and as a woman writing SF I didn't want to automatically paint her with the "feminist" brush and assume that because she's a woman ev...
First off, this review is somewhat less than objective as this book holds a great deal of nostalgia value for me. I first read this book almost 25 years ago, shortly after reading the Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped - which is actually a prequel and written later, and at the time it opened me up t...
Overall is was an enjoyable book. It's a bit inventive, I like the break the author takes from the standard militarism angle. It was refreshing to read a story featuring interplanetary clashing that side-stepped guns and conventional war.I like the versions of a person splitting off... and the ov...
There's probably a case to be made that Tepper could get herself a nice career creating fictional worlds for other writers. I've only read three books by her and two of those showcase someone with a more than decent imagination giving her characters rich worlds to romp around in, with some though...
This book surprised me in a lot of ways. I was expecting a feminist-inflected retelling of "Sleeping Beauty," and while Beauty started out in that vein, it didn't stay there long.Briefly, the story is about the title character --- a half-fairy daughter of a duke in fourteenth-century England --- ...
For Mavin, coming of age as a shape-shifter is both exhilarating and terrifying. Recklessly headstrong, she is to become notorious in the lands of the True Game. With her brother, she leaves their home - a place of slavery and fear - only to have the boy's powers of beguilement lead them into dan...
The Merchant was one, the Duke of Betand another. The pombis and the gnarlibar had been less successfully hunted than they had planned. I found Valearn’s body just down the street from the place she had bitten the baby. Her neck was broken, it appeared. There was no sign of Huldra.Nor of Dedrina ...
Time went by, yes, but Saluez did not care much about that. She did not hunger or thirst. The women around her forced her to eat and drink. Her prayers to Weaving Woman had not been answered. Her shuttle had not carried light. Her pattern was dark, only dark, and no one could see its end. There w...
She was moved by two happenings: a tragedy and a meanness, either of which would have been reason enough by itself. The meanness came first. She heard Gralf, the House-Pa, tell his cronies he’d taken an advance payment from Old Digger, who would be wanting Needly right so...
Dazzle, backed by Borold and the High King’s men, demanded aid in seeking Silkhands. The Demon refused. Silkhands was no part of his bother. The pawner, meantime, felt ill used since he had not been paid for finding me. Of the three, the only one with any dignity was the Demon, and him I could al...
With a quick look to be sure the door to his bedroom was closed, he opened the door only slightly to see the unremarkable face of one of his spies. The spy whispered, “The woman’s headed down there, Doc.” “The procession’s coming? As we planned?” The spy nodded, scratching his head. “They’re happ...
Although led initially by Explorers, most groups had long since lost their guides. As the intent of the troops had become clear, the Explorers had vanished. This did not greatly disturb the officers, who had been well briefed by Colonel Lang, although it occasioned a mild spookiness among the ran...
The air was full of strange smells, and it was almost noon before the last of the fogs burned away to show the narrow line of blue far above at the canyon’s rim. The river plunged between two pillars of stone onto a long slope where it spread and stilled itself, whispering between grassy banks ed...
He was searching the desert for women’s bodies, finding them everywhere. Each one had to be pulled a long way away from the bed of squirming snakes it lay upon. He struggled up the dunes, tugging the mummified corpses after him, the wind drying his eyes, the sun crisping his skin, himself burning...
Beneath the window on a narrow ledge was a flame-bird’s nest, a tidily woven basket of straw and wild-pamet fiber, holding three spherical golden eggs. An additional pile of pamet fiber lay to one side, weighted down by several small stones. In a flash of orange and gold, the flame-bird itself ca...
Winesap's window, bubbling its music in vain to ears which did not hear. "I hear," whispered Marianne, speaking to the night, the rain, the comer of the living room she could see from her bed. When she lay just so, the blanket drawn across her lips, the pillow crunched into an exact shape, she co...
The trainers had brought collapsible whelping boxes with them, and within a couple of hours, seven little ones were born, three dogs and four bitches. All of them were dark, some were marked with brown. When Scramble had them thoroughly cleaned up, licked into shape, and nestled against her belly...