Tepper, Sheri S. - Grass

[oyceter]

A plague threatens humanity throughout the universe, save on the planet Grass. Sanctity, the church that rules Earth, sends the Yrarier family to Grass in hopes that their affinity for horses and horseriding will somehow allow them to get closer with the aristocracy on Grass (the bons) to hopefully find a cure for the plague. However, the humans on Grass are limited to a small area due to the bons' unwillingness to kill too much of the ubiquitous grass that covers the planet. Unsurprisingly, there's a surprise regarding the planet and the bons' strange predilection for hunting, albeit not quite with horses, hounds, and foxes.

Meanwhile, Marjorie Westriding Yrarier's marriage is falling apart and the trip to Grass stresses it further.

I thought this was all right, albeit with frustrating characters, until the big reveal. Marjorie is almost never wrong, her husband is a two-dimensional ass, her daughter is just like her husband, and the son who resembles her is just like her. The brothers and elders at the Grassian Church are more interesting at least.

Also, much of this felt like Speaker for the Dead to me, only less interesting.

Spoilers for Grass and Speaker

I suspect I would have been more into the slug-things to hounds to Hippae to foxen reveal had I not read Speaker before, with its central transformation from pequenino to tree. However, I haven't read a lot of SF, so this could very well be a trope that I don't know, so I was willing to give that a pass. And then, the big reveal is that... the Hippae are malevolent and evil! Just like they are hinted to be from the very beginning of the book! Not only that, there is no reason for them to be malevolent and evil except for the fact that it was a random mutation down the line. Unimpressed!

Also, when I can predict that the Hippae are spreading the plague in the form of the dead bats about a hundred pages before the characters have figured it out, something is wrong. I normally am terrible at figuring out things ahead of the big reveal, so I am fairly sure this was pretty obvious.

I did like the message about the foxen's fence-sitting being damaging and the metaphor of humans as viruses, but mostly I was incredibly annoyed that there wasn't a big reveal behind why the peeper-hound-Hippae-foxen transformation was the way it was (no explanatory planetary trauma sparked by a DNA-unraveling virus), and no larger reveal to why the Hunt save that the foxen would eat peepers.

So... did I miss something really huge? I do not understand why this is supposed to be groundbreaking ecological SF? (My copy has a quote saying "a subtle, complex meditation on ecological disaster.")

Comments

[oyceter]

Thanks for the perspective... It's too bad this hasn't aged that well. I haven't read enough to know, but hopefully there will be more middle-aged female protags in the 1970-80s feminist sf I'm trying to read that I'll like better than Marjorie.

[al_zorra]

There's another perspective too as one goes along in life: it is more interesing for protagoinists to be interesting and plausible than likeable. A really terrific character can be someone who isn't like you, who you don't like, who you do not identify with. I love those characters now. I didn't used to, though, or understand the difference -- and I was a grad lit student even!

Also, plots about who ends up with who aren't as interesting any longer once one is ended up. Or maybe that is just me?

I recall after my first novel came out a much younger friend was in the process of reading it and she called me up begging me to tell her if the protagonists ended with blahblahblah -- I answered, "She doesn't end up with anybody. That's not her destiny." My friend got very angry! :) She did read to the end though, and liked the ending after all, though she said she was glad she'd been warned.

Love, C.

[oyceter]

Hrm, I didn't put that well... my problem with Marjorie isn't just that I didn't like her, it was that I found her to be implausibly right all the time as well as rather two dimensional. I suspect the implausibly right would have been forgivable, since many book protags can be, but the flatness of the characterization killed it for me. I've liked quite a few characters who are unlikable or immoral or completely different from me, but sadly, the characters in Grass aren't among them. YMMV, of course, since my dislike of the book in no way detracts from anyone else's opinion of it.

Not quite sure where the plots about who ends up with whom has to do with Grass, and I tend to be very pro female characters not having to end up heterosexually romantically involved to complete their lives.

[al_zorra]

It's been so long since I read Grass. It's not out of the realm of consideration at all that the protag is implausible.

Love, C.