Grass by Sheri S. Tepper
426 pages
Published 1989
Read from May 11 to May 17
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
Way back in January, when I read and reviewed The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay, I happened to find and bookmark this list
of 1980s science fiction novels. I intended to go through the list
somewhat systematically (contemporaneously with the 100+ books on my
recommended list and the 100+ books I own but haven't read, two more
lists I plan to go through somewhat systematically). Systematic
procedures be damned, though -- I added Grass to my immediate to-read list because the Wiki entry made it sound fairly interesting.
Before
reading this, I'm not sure what my expectations are. I have a fondness
for 1980s sci-fi novels, it's true, but every decade, no matter what its
literary fashions, produces far more dreck than gold. And while Grass was nominated for a Hugo and Locus Award, it won neither, and my impression of Tepper is colored by The Fresco, a forgettable novel I never even managed to complete way back in the early 2000s. Almost anything and anyone can get nominated for awards, I've learned; a Hugo nomination means almost nothing.
After reading this... well, that was a missed opportunity.
For the first third or so of Grass,
I was stoked. An intriguing world, potentially interesting characters,
subplots that complicated the main storylines quite pleasingly. I don't
like single-biome worlds in my science fiction, but I was willing to
overlook that because it gave us the race of the Hippae: sadistic alien
assholes that sound like a cross between demon-horses and Huayangosaurus, and (inevitably -- this book was
written in the 1980s) holding powers of psycho-erotic control over
their human "riders." I was going to fill this review with a discussion
of the obvious sci-fi version of Mormonism, with its genetic repository
and computer recreation of the DNA of every human that ever lived (a
Trenchant Social Metaphor, or merely something Tepper thought was a neat
concept?), as well as premature comparisons to Hyperion,
another, much better novel about the people who seek answers to vital,
galactic-scale questions on a beautiful and perilous colony world. But
then, by the middle section, it all became muddled and melodramatic,
dithering along with soap opera plots and ever-increasing numbers of
ever-less-developed viewpoint characters that only exist to give the
main plot a nudge. The initial promise was entirely squandered, leaving
the rest of the book something of a chore to get through. I get that
personal conflicts and flawed personalities will surface even when The
Fate of the Human Race is at stake -- in fact I prefer personal stories
in my genre fiction -- but "emotionally domineering husband and
emotionally unavailable wife just don't understand each other" is
some gender-bound Lifetime Channel bullshit, boring and unrelatable,
especially when they're literally only together because their religion
says divorce is a sin, which (to my ever-judgmental eyes) just makes
them look stupid and irrational. Well, even more stupid and irrational
than two people operating under gender stereotypes already are.
The
rising action is weighed down and cluttered up with all those extra
viewpoints and side plots that go basically nowhere. I mean, I'm pretty
sure Marjorie could have had her climactic, silly meeting with God (and
its oh-so-thematic revelation of how intelligent creatures must work out
morality for themselves) without some doofy D-level goons from the
Sci-Fi Mormon monastery showing up hoping for a thrill-kill. I'm dead
certain the overall story did not benefit from the cliched "my deformity
made me evil" guy, who felt like a weird leftover from a far inferior
draft. I'd say at least a hundred pages could have been edited
out of existence with no thematic or emotional loss to the story. So not
even scenes like the central family and their friends gearing up their
horses like futuristic jousters, complete with laser-tipped lances and
lightweight flank armor, to do battle with the demon-horse-dinosaurs --
seriously one of the most metal scenes I've read all year -- could
entirely salvage Grass in my estimation. The coda was satisfying, but too little, too late.
Overall
I'd call this one an ambitious trainwreck. Totally worth the read for
the occasional awesome bits, just don't expect a lost classic.
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