From the Bookshelf of Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels…

Grass (Arbai, #1)

Sheri S. Tepper

Start date: January 1, 2024

Finish date: January 31, 2024

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What Members Thought

Oct 26, 2020 Silvana rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: female-nonbinary-authors, sci-fi, reading-with-friends, kindle-google, z-2020-sf-novel-novella, mine-mine-mine, sff-2020-reading-challenge, z-2020-wotf-challenge

What a strange book. Fascinating alien world, interesting female MC, yet so unsettling. Too many trigger points for me. It is most definitely will not be included in the Do Better: SFF without Sexual Violence group shelf. ...more

18 likes · Like · see review

Oct 28, 2018 Tomislav rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, sff-2018-read-all-the-books

Sheri Tepper was a prolific science fiction writer of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, who passed away just two years ago. Even though she preferred the term eco-humanist, her work is often identified as eco-feminist, and her fame rests strongly in the feminist segment of science fiction readers. I did not read much of her work when it was new, but have picked up a few of them as I close some of the gaps in my back-reading of the science fiction catalog. Grass is one of her better-known works, recei Sheri Tepper was a prolific science fiction writer of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, who passed away just two years ago. Even though she preferred the term eco-humanist, her work is often identified as eco-feminist, and her fame rests strongly in the feminist segment of science fiction readers. I did not read much of her work when it was new, but have picked up a few of them as I close some of the gaps in my back-reading of the science fiction catalog. Grass is one of her better-known works, receiving a Hugo Award nomination in 1990, but losing the award to Dan Simmons’ Hyperion. Two very-loosely connected sequels were released over the next few years, but Grass can definitely be read as a stand-alone.

It is set on an ecologically complex colony world, where the few humans live in isolated noble family estates on the world-spanning prairie, and also in one central community of commoners with a spaceport. The aristocratic families focus their lives around dangerous hunts of mysteriously unfoxlike Foxes, riding mysteriously unhorselike Mounts, accompanied by mysteriously unhoundlike Hounds. On this world are also the ruins of a prior interstellar civilization known as Arbai. To this world is sent the primary perspective character Marjorie Westriding-Yrarier, her two children, her prideful ambassador husband Rigo, Rigo’s mistress, and their two family priests. While the Yrariers are Old Catholics, they come from a Terra ruled by Sanctity, which seems to be a theocratic empire evolved from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). The Yrariers bring their horses to Grass under the incorrect assumption that their horsemanship will earn them respect among the nobles.

I found much of the suspense of the novel to be in the slow revelation of the true and dangerous nature of Grass’s Foxes, Mounts, Hounds, and other lifeforms – and eventually the peril into which the primary characters are drawn. Marjorie is a fully developed character, highly restrained by her own sense of religious duty, accepting her husband’s mistress while throttling her own wants and needs. Between her own denial of sexual feelings for a local noble’s handsome and understanding son, her husband’s unrealistically overbearing arrogance, and Tepper’s loving dotage on horsemanship, I was afraid this novel was heading for chick-lit romance. But things do not go that way, and by the second half there are frequent plot shifts, additional world-building, discussions of religious philosophy, and generally a lot of more interesting stuff.

The ending is just tad too tidy, but leaves open the possibility of sequels that are not just more of the same. Indeed, as I understand, Raising the Stones and Sideshow are set a thousand years later. It is worth reading on its own, but I probably will not seek out the sequels. ...more

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May 18, 2017 Cheryl marked it as xx-dnf-skim-reference · review of another edition

Do not like the treatment of men vs. women. I was thinking, maybe that's setup, and it's going to get better, but I peeked at the end and it didn't look good. And, of course, always leery of reading first in a series. Also, I don't like mysteries. The aristocrats we meet early on know what's up with their planet, why must I be kept in the dark? Also, I didn't like the characters... again, maybe they'd grown on me; maybe it's intentional they make a poor first impression, but I don't like that wr ...more

2 likes · Like · see review