Your Humble Blogger has, if memory is to be believed, read six or seven novels by Sheri S. Tepper. I’m not sure why I keep at it. Yes, she’s remarkable at creating worlds, and yes, she writes very well, but the religious messages in her books are overbearing enough to make me cross, and the plots always fall apart about five-sixths of the way into the book, when the omnipotent entity simply dispenses with any remaining opposition.
I’ve just finished The Companions (New York: Eos 2003). How can you get worked up about having not one but two hostile fleets, and a super-race streaming in thousands to seek vengeance on the good guys who have nothing but a record player and a smell-o-vision set, when you know that the world-mind will brush off the bad guys like midges?
There are lots of good bits, and there is actually some good plotting. If I were new to Tepperland, I would have quite enjoyed the various predicaments, traps and dilemmas into which Our Heroine was plunged. As it was, I didn’t much care.
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.