TimMason reviewed The Family Tree by Sheri S. Tepper
Review of 'The Family Tree' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
I have just reread this book.
I enjoy Tepper's work a lot. She was inventive, quirky, and very readable. At her best, as in some of the passages in the earlier part of this book, her writing is superb: the chapter which introduces the Biwot family is very good indeed. At other times, she was, as she herself said, ready to sacrifice the writing to get the story told, but slapdash Tepper is better than a lot of fantasy writers at their best.
Tepper is much given to the apocalyptic. In this novel, she sets up two of them. One is set in a world quite like our own, and the main protagonist is a young police officer, Dora Henry. Married to a manipulative psychopath, she extricates herself from the marriage only to find that civilization is under attack. In a riff on John Wyndham's 'The Triffids', the invaders are …
I have just reread this book.
I enjoy Tepper's work a lot. She was inventive, quirky, and very readable. At her best, as in some of the passages in the earlier part of this book, her writing is superb: the chapter which introduces the Biwot family is very good indeed. At other times, she was, as she herself said, ready to sacrifice the writing to get the story told, but slapdash Tepper is better than a lot of fantasy writers at their best.
Tepper is much given to the apocalyptic. In this novel, she sets up two of them. One is set in a world quite like our own, and the main protagonist is a young police officer, Dora Henry. Married to a manipulative psychopath, she extricates herself from the marriage only to find that civilization is under attack. In a riff on John Wyndham's 'The Triffids', the invaders are trees, which thrust their way through asphalt, interrupt transport systems, rearrange the architecture and eat superfluous babies. Dora establishes a rapport with the trees, and, as one expects with Tepper, sympathizes with their campaign- including the infanticide, which, she assures the reader, is done in a kindly, even loving way.
The other is set in a fantasy world, in which magic is strong enough for the authorities to attempt to repress it. Two young princes, each with their entourage, set out on a quest which has been impressed upon them by prophecy. If they fail, the world's population will die out. We follow their journey across the continent, avoiding the bad guys, mainly through the sorcerous powers of one of the princes, until they come to their journey's end, where they discover what exceptional heroic deed is expected of them.
At this point, Tepper brings the two worlds together in an amusing twist which I will leave you to discover. And it is about here that the writing loosens up as the author pushes her story to its close. I found this rather disappointing, mainly because characters that she had been at great pains to delineate in the early part of the book are just swept along in the action without having much to do. A perfunctory romance is played out, but Tepper herself doesn't really seem to believe in it.
Tepper's politics are out front as usual: Dora is the main voice for the author's world vision. But they do not get in the way of the story itself.
I'd recommend reading it.
