Sheri S. Tepper

I'm no longer nearly as fond of Tepper as I once was. When I started reading her, she was writing very odd, very strange, wildly implausible little fantasy novels, like the True Game series, and the Marianne trilogy. Since, she's acquired pretensions and begun to load her books Rather Heavily with Matters of Import, and so isn't nearly as fun. I'd avoid Grass, in particular, at all costs. And then, the world view she's pushing so strongly I find distasteful (I really don't need to be told, in book after book, that men and religion are the source of all ills. Great, I've got the message, I don't buy it, enough already.).

But I do still like her earlier stuff, and here's some of it.

The True Game

The premise is completely absurd, and becomes more so the more you know, but these are still great books.

• King's Blood Four

Reviews: 1 July 2004

• Necromancer's Nine

• Wizard's Eleven

Reviews: 1 July 2004

• The Song of Mavin Manyshaped

• The Flight of Mavin Manyshaped

• The Search of Mavin Manyshaped

• Jinian Footseer

Reviews: 1 July 2004

• Jinian Star-Eye

Reviews: 1 July 2004

• Dervish Daughter

Reviews: 1 July 2004

Marianne

Tepper is amazingly good at creating strange little worlds with rules of their own, and her skill is manifest nowhere so well as in these three books.

• Marianne, the Magus, and the Manticore

• Marianne, the Madame, and the Momentary Gods

• Marianne, the Matchbox, and the Malachite Mouse

Other Books

• After Long Silence

• The Awakeners

• The Revenants

• Beauty

• A Plague of Angels

• The Family Tree

Reviews: 1 August 1998