From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Full of fascinating characters and beautifully detailed settings, Tepper's complex and multifaceted far-future SF novel follows the many selves of Mars colonist Margaret Bain on a mission to save the human race from annihilation. Long ago, hairless bipeds earned the eternal hatred of the foul-tempered Quaatar after some prehumans stowed away on a Quaatar survey ship. Now humankind is at the brink of self-destruction through overpopulation and ecological collapse. The farsighted Gentherans have taken up the human cause within the Interstellar Trade Organization, but as Earthgov struggles to conform to ISTO's enforced sterilization laws while trading excess children for offworld water, the Quaatar continue plotting to destroy humanity. Only Margaret, a secret organization called the Third Order of the Siblinghood and the truth behind an old Gentheran folktale can stop the genocide and give humanity a future. As always, Locus Award–winner Tepper (
The Companions) wields grand science fiction themes with skill, vision and a twist of black humor.
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In her sprawling seventeenth novel, Tepper envisions humanity's existence in a crowded league with alien races as tentative. More-advanced yet ill-tempered extraterrestrials, such as the Quaatar, would rather rescue a perfectly good planet like Earth from its environmentally toxic parasites. To forestall humanity's wholesale extinction, Earthgov cuts a deal with the Interstellar Trade Organization by selling off 90 percent of its citizens as slaves and pets. One of the contract's unwitting victims is Margaret Bain, who, as the only child on the sparsely populated Martian moon Phobos, finds companionship by creating imaginary versions of herself as, for example, a queen, a warrior, even a boy. Each time Margaret faces a crisis, the other Margarets split off and grow to adulthood on other worlds. In the end, however, the separate Margarets must reunite, skills and experiences intact, to save Earth from ultimate destruction. Tepper's multiple worlds and story lines offer a broad canvas for penetrating cultural observations and for a spectrum of colorful characters, who enliven one of her most inventive novels to date. Hays, Carl
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