Sherri S Tepper

[Princess Ivy]

I loved a plague of angels, and have just picked up an am thoroughly engrosed in Beauty, however I found Grass and A gate to Womans Country very difficult to read, grass was disturbing, but good, and womens country just incredibly boring. I love her ideas, although post apocalyptic stuff can be very difficult, and i feel she is limiting herslef a lot by using this as the major theme in all four of the books i've read so far. Just wondering if anyone else has read her stuff, and wanted to pick up others ideas.

 

[The Master™]

Grass is very disturbing... But a very good read... I am not sure if I'll get around to any of her other books... Took a while to get into Grass... Prefer a writer who draws you in at the outset...

I'm starting to read more women writers, to see what the difference is from a female perspective... It is quite refreshing...

 

[Kraken]

I didn't dislike Beauty, but I can't remember very much about it now. I've tried three times to read A Plague of Angels - I just can't get into it. And the start of Sideshow is just too gross - I've never got past the first few pages.
She does repeat themes, and it can feel like you're just reading rehashes of earlier works sometimes, Singer From the Sea suffered from that. The Visitor and The Fresco both had good moments, but neither really grabbed me. Six Moon Dance is a bit uneven, but overall pretty good, IMO.
My favourites are Raising the Stones and particularly Gibbon's Decline and Fall.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

I've heard accusations - and from an avowedly feminist commentator at that - that Tepper has a very narrow agenda - to show the evils of patriarchal systems, and the wickedness of abusing the environment, and that all her books are variations on these themes, with the people who she thinks of as embodying what she is against painted in such a negative light that it is inevitable that the reader will wind up loathing them. I did feel some of this in The Visitor - unecessary digs at the play-agression in the games of young boys, for instance - but is this at all a fair critique, Kraken?

 

[Princess Ivy]

I've heard accusations - and from an avowedly feminist commentator at that - that Tepper has a very narrow agenda - to show the evils of patriarchal systems, and the wickedness of abusing the environment, and that all her books are variations on these themes, with the people who she thinks of as embodying what she is against painted in such a negative light that it is inevitable that the reader will wind up loathing them. I did feel some of this in The Visitor - unecessary digs at the play-agression in the games of young boys, for instance - but is this at all a fair critique, Kraken?

I most deffinately can be, if you have tried the gate to womens country, i'm a feminist, but couldn't read it myself. to damn dark and depressing. I've read two of hers and skimmed another two, and have seen these themes, either separately or together in all of them. The thread that seems to be most common though is the environmental theme.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

That's a pity then, since her concerns are in themselves are valid. It's a common failing in didactic fiction to resort to a sort of straw-man argument though, creating a setup where it's clear that your view is the better one - this is one problem people have with Terry Goodkind, for instance, and Heinlein has been guilty of this sort of thing at times.

 

[Princess Ivy]

the novels themselves are enjoyable though and worth a read in my book.

 

[Cassandracat]

I find that I can only read one Tepper book at a time. I need a good break in between otherwise I start to find her themes too similar. My favourites are Gibbon's Decline and Fall, The Family Tree and Raising the Stones. I know that Grass has been critically acclaimed but I really struggled with it. It could be the fact that I hadn't read much sci-fi before when I read this so I will try again at a later date.

Has anyone read any of her earlier books that are now out of print? The True Game and the Marianne books? I've managed to pick up a couple in secondhand book stores but don't want to start reading them until I have them all.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Hi Cassandracat, and welcome to the Chronicles Network.