Customer Reviews

Singer from the Sea

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

O.K., so it's all been said before. I agree: Tepper's ideas get old. But (at the risk of being tendentious) whoever finds fault with male SF authors for repeatedly creating heroes who don't even measure up as bad adolescent fantasies, who tromp around their respective realms (physical and metaphysical) demanding homage on the basis of their strenghth and not on the basis of their use of it, who pass the time in proving their prowess and that IS the plot, who (like hobbyists) go about collecting lands and honors in order to collect more lands and and honors, and who pal around with advisory-figures who during said heroes' (rare) moments of reflection and doubt, assure them that everything they do is okay since "people are stupid" and have a lesson or two coming to them anyway? Huh? Nobody, that's who, and quite rightly, since many books of this description are roaring good reads, move along like houses afire, and manage the titanic feat of keeping track of two or more different chains of events which take place at different locations at approximately the same time. As nobody I know of reads science fiction for enlightenment (God help them if they do) that's about all one can ask of a science fiction novel; and at all the abovementioned tasks (namely: plot, pacing, world-construction) Tepper excels. Why, heck, she even WRITES well. Enough said.

Now, having come to Tepper's defense, I'm going to speak of what bothers me most about her. And what bothers me most about Tepper is her anti-technological stance; her notion that Homo Faber, the direct descendent of Homo Habilis the Tinkerer, is somehow always intrinsically, genetically criminal, just bound to be up to no good. In book after book of Tepper's we are invited to behold the disastrous consequences of human meddling; in no book of hers do we ever receive much of a suggestion that such meddling may sometimes turn out WELL--that it may result in a cathedral, a symphony, a cure for polio or an unusually nifty flower display. No, Tepper implies, human ingenuity is not wanted in this universe: down with it.

Worse yet, this proscription against too much ingenuity, too much human cleverness, seems to come down hardest upon her sex and mine. Tepper's books treat eloquently of the power imbalance btween the sexes and the disastrous consequences which often proceed from THAT, but it's been years since she's painted the picture of a woman accepting power instead of renouncing it. In _Singer from the Sea_ Tepper has a great deal of fun at the expense of cultural conventions which prescribe resignation and acquiescence (not initiative and problem-solving) on the part of women. But, in the end, in effect, she herself preaches the same thing. Nineteenth-century conduct books used chillingly to recommend that women be "wise for self-renunciation and not for self-development": in other words they advised women only to USE power in the service of LOSING power. The female lead of _Singer from the Sea_, Genevieve Marchioness of Wantresse, does just that: she evinces ability, but only in the cause of service to a higher power; isn't that precisely what women have all to often been required to do vis-a-vis men? Why should it be any different when the recipient of female sacrifice is a World Spirit instead of a husband? And the World Spirit of Genevieve's planet requires of her the greatest abjection; at the end of the book she renounces meddling, technology--the use of her hands. In doing so, she becomes akin to all the mutilated maidens in the gorier fairytales--the ones who walk out into the world, meet with events which diminish them terribly, and who must thereafter either outclever or cope with their diminishment--except that Genevieve wishes her disempowerment upon HERSELF (to say nothing of her descendants.)

THAT is appalling. And it's a sacrifice required only of the female--one of Genevieve's (male) sidekicks, Jeorfy Bottoms, escapes his own entrapment by learning about machines and about the technology which will allow him to assume some degree of control over his circumstances, while Genevieve is made to sink back into the realm of the undifferentiated. Mercedes Lackey's retelling of a fairly grim fairytale, _The Black Swan_, a book with an argumentative thrust similar to that of _Singer from the Sea_, DEMANDS of its female protagonist that she learn how to interfere, to accomplish, to achieve, to DO. Lackey's heroine accedes to power, she does not deny it: she strengthens her hands instead of (metaphorically) cutting them off. The whole point of _The Black Swan_ is that Odile von Rothbart can do things with hands that she can't do with wings; the whole point of _Singer form the Sea_ is that Genevieve would be better off with flippers. The husband, he's the best thing in the book. By far. To the cynical he might appear to be a bit infatuated and biddable but verily, I say unto you, appearances are frequently deceitful. Aufors Leys, male lead of _Singer from the Sea_, has gonads of steel. His powers of endurance are superlative, his resourcefulness is amazing, and his intentness on getting what he wants gives rise to awe. (Of course, that last characteristic is okay since he's a guy.) Aufors Leys displays syptoms only too infrequently to be met with among the general run of science fiction males--he shows signs of being a REAL HERO. Admittedly, he's a romantic hero: his quest is to find out what's up with his woman. THIS, as my mother used to say, is the kind of man you marry. The sad thing is, though, that his character is ineluctably weakened toward the novel's end, just as his wife Genevieve is "winning toward the goal" of her apothesis. Exactly why should that be? Nothing in the plot necessitates it. For my part I can't escape the feeling that, just as it's somehow ACTUALLY not all right for women in the world described by _Singer from the Sea_ to learn to cope with machinery, it's also somehow not all right for Genevieve to end up being able to do something that her husband can't.

All the same (as I said before) Tepper writes well, constructs worlds like an expert, handles a plot line (or several) like a pro. Hence this diatribe. _Singer from the Sea_ is, like all her books, an eloquent testimonial to her authorial powers. It's because Tepper's books are so consistently so GOOD that it troubles me when they appear to be implying Very Bad Things--that's all. I don't think we NEED another renunciation story, either as women or as men. The kind of transformation story in which the protagonist learns to endure pain and to accept fate has been WRITTEN already--by the Brothers Grimm and by everybody else. As I see it, we need more transformation stories in which the transformed characters end up with REALLY COOL POWERS which enable them to do INCREDIBLY INTERESTING THINGS. Anything less, as Queen Mu tells us, is BORING. Why is it that books like _Singer from the Sea_, with such promising sources of interest at their command, preach acquiescence in dullness, in non-differentiation, at the last? Why should we be advised, either as women or as men, to live our lives out underwater?

With sincere apologies to the great Isaac Asimov, there has never been
a better world builder than Sheri Tepper. And with further apologies
to Ursula LeGuin, no one handles gender issues and emotional
ambiguities better than Ms. Tepper. Her prose remains brilliant, the
plot is complex, and the character development extensive.

Summary:
On a world divided into nobility and commoners, where women are slaves
and pawns, we find that the royalty has discovered a drug which will
give them extremely long lives. The story progresses as an
intelligent, but compliant young woman becomes trapped in the politics
of the creation and distribution of this drug, and ultimately, the
planet's future becomes balanced upon her acceptance of her own
destiny.

Only Sheri Tepper, with her confident story telling, could
explore the nuances of such strong gender roles without lapsing into
modern American feminist diatribe. Her characters do not expostulate,
they talk to each other and we are led through their lives and through
their thoughts. It takes me forever to read through a Tepper book.
Her vocabulary is large, and her sentences are complicated. Ideas are
not thrust onto the page fully developed, rather they evolve with
precision through careful reading and attention to details. However,
like viewing a painting, the greatest pleasure is gained through slow
and careful attention to the work at hand. As you can tell, I highly
recommend this book. And if you can find "Grass" or
"Raising the Stones", you won't be disappointed.

First, this book really has to be read in one sitting (two hours or more, depending on your reading speed, and your distractions). Secondly, the story follows the usual Tepper formula, in that there are a number of men who are *really evil* (the motive differing from book to book) and the heroine of the story is a woman. Of course, not all men are evil in this book. I just thought I should warn the unwary reader, who may not have read any of her other books.

What I love about Tepper is the intricacies of the worlds and the myths she crafts. SIX MOON DANCE featured a remarkable creation and destruction myth (which turns out to be real), a mystery, and several non-human species. SINGER FROM THE SEAS makes the creation myth less explicit (because it has been forgotten by some of the people who should have remembered it), and there is a definite mystery developing.

The very basic plot is that Genevieve, a noblewoman and the daughter of a high-ranking military commander, is left motherless and is packed off by her father to school. There she is to be trained to be a suitable wife, in a rigid and apparently unchanging society where women have virtually no rights, where the mortality rate among young women is surprisingly high, and where young women of her rank are forbidden to sing.

In the first part of the novel, Genevieve is very naive but quickly learns more and more about the complexities of her society, becoming an accomplished hostess (completely unappreciated by her father). She also falls for a commoner, her father's equerry, but knows that marriage between them is not according to tradition. Even a strange request from an older relative does not completely shake her sense of security, although she does begin to question some incongruities. Then, the Prince (heir to the ruler) asks for her hand, sending her into panic. To accept him means a) that she will be parted from her love, and b) that she might die young in childbirth, as do nearly all noblewomen. To refuse him means disaster for herself and her father. Her father is the stereotypical seasoned warrior, completely naive about court politics, but also completely indifferent to his daughter's feelings and aspirations.

So Genevieve runs away (i.e. begins her quest), and has a number of adventures, some resembling Bilbo Baggins's encounter with Gollum (THE HOBBIT). And then, she has a mystical experience with a creature in the seas who tells her to go back to the Prince. Before she does, she has an affair with her lover who has come to rescue her, and falls pregnant. To her puzzlement, the Prince does not stand in the way of their marriage, and even seems pleased by her pregnancy. And the couple, together with the Prince, her father and some other high officials, sets sail for the other major island on their world.

And there, events are set in motion leading to a horrific revelation about why so many young mothers die, and why the leaders of their world are so long-lived. By the end, the sinners are punished, and Genevieve emerges victorious and practically unscathed with her husband and new-born child. The quest has ended, or has it?

Parts of this novel are truly remarkable, including the prologue which might give you a wrong impression of who has married whom until the middle of the novel, the scenes in the desert, the penultimate confrontation between Genevieve and her father. Other parts are alas, less than satisfactory, including the transformation of the Marshal (Genevieve's father) from a not-very-smart but skilled warrior and leader into an inhumane man willing to sacrifice his own flesh-and-blood. The change is too quick, too easy, and too stereotyped. Furthermore, the motivation of the leaders is understandable, but they are all (with a few exceptions) stereotyped, in that they have sacrificed the lives and happiness of so many others without any qualms, and even, no nightmares. It would have helped, for example, to have shown more of the qualms faced by one youngish nobleman Willum who spares someone he loves - but has no qualms about killing others.

Making the leaders and their immediate followers a bit more multidimensional would have helped. The oldest leaders were clearly infantile, but showing the transformation of some others would have added so much more to this book.

I also admit to be one of those people who is not entirely happy with the metaphysical concepts advanced by Sherri Tepper to explain the rise and fall of worlds. It seems that worlds can be destroyed quite satisfactory through mankind's stupidity, without needing any abstract explanations. Also, for a greater sense of purpose, it would have been very interesting to see if Genevieve had been able to get out of her trouble alone (or with the help of her friends), rather than depending on the creatures from the seas.

Rating = 4.3

Tepper's books are not for the faint of heart. They require some effort to read, they're not mind candy. That being said, once you make the effort, you are well rewarded. In this her latest, Tepper gives us an intricate weaving of ecological concerns, feminism, fantasy, suspense, science fiction, all woven together into a wonderful tale of a young woman who, in finding her power, finds herself.

I do think this is one of those books that, if you can, you should try to read all in one sitting. It's somewhat hard to keep all the threads together if you break it up into pieces. But that just speaks to the complexity of the material. I really enjoyed the book, especially as it built towards the climax at the end, and there were parts that literally had my spine tingling and hair rising up on my head (I love it when a book does that) from eager anticipation. All in all a great read.

In Singer from the Sea, author Sherri Tepper creates a memorable heroine, Genevieve the Marchioness of Langmarsh. Who and what Genevieve is happens to be part of the mystery in this novel. Genevieve behaves admirably as the well-brought-up, educated noblewoman she is. But part of her operates at a level that even Genevieve has trouble connecting with. Sometimes she feels, and acts, like two different persons.

People live a long, long time on Haven, that is, if they are of the ruling class and if they are men. Women don't seem to fare as well; a large number of the noblewomen simple fade like flowers after bearing a child or two-mostly succumbing to batfly fever. Only the drug P'Naki, whose production is strictly controlled on the island of Mahahm can save people from batfly fever. Unfortunately, pregnant or nursing women can't take it.

There is another horrific problem looming; planet after planet suffers a mysterious ailment where all native life simply stops. Animals die, plants yellow and wilt. And people begin to suffer a strange affliction; they simply stop as if they were frozen in their tracks. Living, yet not alive. The very time the planet dies can be pinpointed to a night of fires in the sky. What is going on? And why? No one seems to know.

Genevieve is called to serve at the court of the Lord Paramount, ruler of Haven. As she takes up her duties at court, she begins to uncover secrets hidden there, and also begins to uncover what and who she is. And she also begins to discover the true secret of P'Naki. And when she learns more about her heritage, she begins to awaken to the planetary dangers ahead.

Genevieve's discoveries lead her to a deadly dangerous situation, and some very exciting reading. One of Tepper's best books, along with Six Moon Dance, Grass and Gate to Women's Country.

I noticed that one review described this book as "dull." It is true that Tepper has certain themes that recur in all her books, i.e., men oppress women, and as a species, we all seem willing to oppress nature. But, really, I don't need to agree with every one of her opinions to enjoy her wonderful stories. It's the old "Willing suspension of disbelief" that the true book lover is willing to engage! Ms. Tepper's stories are the best as far as my family is concerned. We look forward with eager anticipation to each new book. And this most recent one was among the best. I couldn't stop reading once I started and read straight through to the end! I highly recommend this story to anyone who loves fantasy/science fiction, or just a good story with a real surprise at the end!

I loved this story. It has many sub plots, and until halfway through the book, I was unsure what the P'Naki really was. The story seems to have too many loose ends to tie up, but Tepper does it perfectly. All of the unfinished sub plots are tied up into one nice knot.

I really enjoyed this book. I read everything of Tepper's that I can get my hands on. She has an unbelievable imagination. Even though she repeats themes, each story she tells is fresh and interesting. Each world is new, original, and meticulously detailed. And there is always a mystery to solve or a secret to uncover. Those who have read many of her books know that she comes back to ideas such as the repression of women and the superiority of nature but she does not allow these to overshadow the plot and become "preachy"--although, I admit, she does come close a few times. She usually pulls herself back from the brink by using one of her delightfully ridiculous characters to "tell" us not to take it all so seriously. The worlds she creates and the events that occur are logical and believable. Her main characters are well rounded and the peripheral players are amusing, three dimensional and do a good job of moving the plot forward. I was pleasantly surprised with the ending of this book because it is atypical of Tepper in many ways. Not to give anything away, but I often find myself a bit disturbed and depressed with her endings. This ending was more hopeful, although perhaps a bit too pat in its resolution. I think it would be a great book for those getting started with this genre or with Tepper. Both can be a bit convoluted and confusing, but this story is pretty straight forward as long as one understands that Tepper loves to foreshadow and hint at secrets. But that is the best part!

It's been a while since I read this, and it just hasn't stayed with me the way most of her books do. I really loved The Family Tree, and this one's just not as good as that one was. It has a twist, yes, and I didn't see it coming (except that there's always always always a twist in her books, so I was looking for one), but all of a sudden I can sort of see the point of people who say she writes the same book, about women oppressed by society, over and over again. No, I don't mean that. I still love them.

An enjoyable, intricate, amazingly detailed story. I was impressed with the way the story came together. It's one of the better books I've read recently. However, I've rarely seen breastfeeding portrayed in a more negative way, and this prevented me from a fullfilling empathy with the characters. So while I enjoyed reading this book, I wouldn't buy it or read it again. But if you haven't read it yet, I'd encourage you to do so. It's worth a read.