![]() Millions of square miles of it numberless wind-whipped tsunamis of grass, a thousand sun-lulled caribbeans of grass, a hundred rippling oceans, every ripple a gleam of scarlet or amber, emerald or turquoise, multicolored as rainbows, the colors shivering over the prairies in stripes and blotches, the grasses - some high, some low, some feathered, some straight - making their own geography as they grow. This review originally appeared on Boudica Marginalia. It made me want to read everything else she’s written. ![]() It was complex, deep and thought-provoking. Tepper handles it well so it doesn’t feel like head-hopping, but I did find it a little old-fashioned and in one or two places it is confusing. The other niggle is the omniscient third person POV. Perhaps it doesn’t matter as most of the action is on Grass but it does feel slightly incomplete. The group of colonies that it is part of is quite fuzzy I don’t even know whether to call it a galaxy, system or universe. the planet Grass is sharply drawn and the word picture is rich and vivid. ![]() I only have two minor niggles, and seriously, they are tiny. Tepper avoids the traps of either making her female protag solely defined by her family and romantic relationships or making her a man in a lady costume. It’s worth mentioning because it strikes me that female protagonists, in this type of story, are pretty rare. Marjorie is purposeful woman, driven to solve the mystery at the heart of the disturbing planet she finds herself on and, although she has love interests (three if you count her husband) they are secondary to the main plot. Marjorie is a wife and a mother, and yet she is portrayed as an individual, as active and as as driving the story. It’s nice to read something with a middle aged woman as the protagonist – especially science fiction, especially an adventure mystery. The ideas about social organization are subtly woven in and the plot is always at the foreground. Grass as a world is vividly realised and it’s inhabitants and their relationships are well-drawn. The central mystery is well-handled and the reveal is done slowly over the last third of the book. Then there are the Hippae, who act as mounts in the aristocrats’ hunts, but who are far more than semi-intelligent animals. There are two societies on Grass the aristocrats, an ossified relic of old European aristocracy that spends its time hunting and the Commons which is a vibrant, trading nation. Grass follows Marjorie Yrarier and her family as they go as ambassadors to Grass with the secret mission of finding a cure for the plague. But the secret of the planet’s immunity hides a truth so shattering it could mean the end of life itself. It too had developed a culture… Now a deadly plague is spreading across the stars, leaving no planet untouched, save for Grass. But before humanity arrived, another species had already claimed Grass for its own. Generations ago, humans fled to the cosmic anomaly known as Grass.
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