Rating: 
Summary: Good book - but not Tepper's best
Review: Tepper is one of my all-time favorite authors; I simply devour all that she's written. Having said that, this is a good book and I did enjoy it quite a bit - but felt compelled to rank it less than high simply because in the pool of all her works there are a few others that float a little higher. If you are a Tepper fan you MUST read this - however if you have not yet read anything by her start with something a little more powerful such as GRASS or GIBBON'S DECLINE AND FALL.
Rating: 
Summary: Highly Recommended
Review: There are few books I recomend, but this series was wonderful. The strongest part of the book is the characteriztion of Peter, the main charater. He is a believable young man. The series is only surpassed by the following series Jinian Footseer, Dervish Daughter, and Jinian Star-eye. Whish everone should bother the publisher until it is reissued or collected.
Rating:
Summary: Truly Grand Adventure
Review: This is actually a sequence of nine books, starting with King's Blood Four, Necromancer Nine and Wizard's Eleven. They've been out of print awhile, but there's an omnibus paperback of these three novels published a few years back, which may be easier to find, called simply The True Game. They start off with that semi-cliched pretext of living chessmen, of people with fantastical psi-powers waging battle on various scales with each other...But it quickly escalates into truly grand adventure. Peter is an orphan in a Schoolhouse, a supposedly-safe nursery for the children of noble Gamesmen and Gameswomen. They spend their days learning the dizzying list of Talents, the multitudinous combinations of gifts of seeing, moving, healing, shapchanging, etc. Predictably, but excitingly, Peter lands in adventures of all kinds as his own Talent becomes known...The second trio of books deal with Mavin Manyshaped, Peter's long-lost mother. Incredibly unworldly settings---my favorite is the culture hidden away in a deep rift valley overshadowed by great trees and filled with roots and mists. The third trio is narrated by Jinian Footseer, a Wise-Ard (read 'wizard') whose mission of world-healing reveals startling facts about the origin of the Talents and the Gamesmen and the world. Tepper truly excels at world-building. I'm always glad to read anything with her name on it.
Rating:
Summary: What Happened to Tepper?
Review: This is Tepper's best work; she spins a fantastic world. Her writing here is what I think of as 'archetypal'. Like Adams' work in Watership Down or Tolkien's in Middle-Earth; and to mention a fave of mine whom I'm apparently the only one to've read, Eddison's Zimiamvia. What these three preeminently share, and in the case of Tepper's Marianne and World of the True Game trilogies, incl Mavin Many-Shaped (The Revenants and The Awakeners were good too.) she shares with them, is the ability to write as if they were creating folk-lore. It strikes right at the heart. She's brilliant, here. Since she's gotten to be a 'serious author' she's gotten so D----d preachy and didactic, always grinding one axe or another. Her later stuff has been a real disappointment; I can't even read it. I personally believe she's wasting her obviously great talents. I labored through her some of her later stuff out of loyalty, but bogged down in Sideshow. (incidentally it's genetically impossible to have conjoined male and female twins.) Yes, the great master Robert Heinlein, preached; but he got away with it by putting his sermons in the mouths of memorable characters-- admittedly all alter egos of Robert Heinlein. His sermons are art. Tepper's are merely dogmatic PC rant and cant.
Rating: 
Summary: Overall very good book.
Review: Thoroughly enjoyed the book, though was quite disappointed that Tepper fell into a similar trap as many Fantasy author's, she seems to have forgotten what she wrote before. Perhaps she had just run out of bad guys, but when one show's compassion in the first of the trilogy, objecting to useless torture, it's hard to believe he'd tortured everything as a kid, or now would hang the living to die on the wall of the celar in the third. Anyway, aside from that good book, and very interesting philosophical thoughts on science and religion.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!!! Wish Tepper would write more on this subject..
Review: Was lucky enough to find all of the True Game, Jinian, and Mavin books at a used book store, except for Kings Blood Four. I reread these books constantly; they are well written, and the ideas presented are quite provocative, despite the fact that the books are fiction. These books are not good for a 'light read', as the concepts presented require close attention in order to be understood. Also not good for a 'before bedtime' reading, as they are almost impossible to put down!!!
Rating:
Summary: Great, but you need to read all nine books in the series!
Review: When I saw this book I thought it was going to be all nine True Game books in one volume. Alas it is only the first three. I have all nine and treasure them! I went to some obscure used bookstores to complete the set. For those who want to try to find them all, here are the titles of all nine books in the order in which they should be read: 1. Kings Blood Four(1983) 2. Necromancer Nine (1983) 3. Wizard's Eleven (1984) 4. The Song of Mavin Manyshaped (1985) 5. The Flight of Mavin Manyshaped (1985) 6. The Search of Mavin Manyshaped (1985) 7. Jinian Footseer (1985) 8. Dervish Daughter (1986) 9. Jinian Stareye (1986). In addition, she also wrote another unusual trilogy after the true game books. They are great but also out of print: 1. Marianne, The Magus, and the Manticore (1985) 2. Marianne, The Madame, and the Momentary Gods (1988) 3. Marianne, The Matchbox, and the Malachite Mouse(1989). Good luck!
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