Helpful Score: 1
I have had this book on my TBR shelf for six years. I knew it was Tepper's last, which made me sad, and I knew it was the third in a series and also incorporated characters from the True Game series, which I didn't remember at all. So what with one thing and another it waited until I decided to re-read all of those. Oh dear.
What a sad, terrible mess to be the last novel of such a major talent. I blame at least a third of it on the editing. There's a section in chapter 1 that's repeated verbatim in chapter 3, there's innumberable conversations that go over the same information, characters who have left on a trip suddenly start talking around the campfire. But even so, this book just doesn't work well. Of course with Tepper you expect the long harangues: people have ruined the earth, men only think with their cocks, religion encourages awful behavior and so on. It's a message that resonates with me but it's just TOO MUCH. It goes on for so much of the book's dialogue it's wearying. Then we have the deus ex machina that's telegraphed way in advance, a torturously convoluted plot device to bring back characters from The True Game, technological devices that might as well be magic, griffins and giants and potions... The best parts of this book were the characters of Abasio, Needly and the mama griffin; the world-building was good and the descriptions were excellent. There was a fascinating snip where the ul xaolat talked - that was great, why was it just that once? The library helmets were great. It all gets wrapped up in a messy package with the remaining humans musically reconciled into turning into octopi, and the time-travelling magical alien who arranged it all has moved all the animals to a lovely planet all their own.
I love many of Tepper's books. This isn't one of them. I will go back to Grass, or even The Family Tree, to remember how good she really was.
What a sad, terrible mess to be the last novel of such a major talent. I blame at least a third of it on the editing. There's a section in chapter 1 that's repeated verbatim in chapter 3, there's innumberable conversations that go over the same information, characters who have left on a trip suddenly start talking around the campfire. But even so, this book just doesn't work well. Of course with Tepper you expect the long harangues: people have ruined the earth, men only think with their cocks, religion encourages awful behavior and so on. It's a message that resonates with me but it's just TOO MUCH. It goes on for so much of the book's dialogue it's wearying. Then we have the deus ex machina that's telegraphed way in advance, a torturously convoluted plot device to bring back characters from The True Game, technological devices that might as well be magic, griffins and giants and potions... The best parts of this book were the characters of Abasio, Needly and the mama griffin; the world-building was good and the descriptions were excellent. There was a fascinating snip where the ul xaolat talked - that was great, why was it just that once? The library helmets were great. It all gets wrapped up in a messy package with the remaining humans musically reconciled into turning into octopi, and the time-travelling magical alien who arranged it all has moved all the animals to a lovely planet all their own.
I love many of Tepper's books. This isn't one of them. I will go back to Grass, or even The Family Tree, to remember how good she really was.
