Six Moon Dance

Rating:
Summary: not believable
Review: The history and reasoning Tepper gives for how the female-dominant society came about is hardly believable. This social structure (as she has it set up) could not maintain itself. However, Tepper is a very good writer, and if you can blindly accept this society, the book makes for a good read.

Rating:
Summary: An absolute gem
Review: There are those who say that Sheri Tepper has only one story to tell and that she tells it over and over again in her books. There is a degree of truth to that statement. Certainly, in "Six Moon Dance", Tepper spins her usual futuristic speculative yarn of mankind threatening a wider planetary intelligence through ignorance and greed, in a world run by a matriarchal society rigorously controlled through the creation and manipulation of religious taboos. As usual, her tale is supercharged with gender issues and cultural curiosities, as she holds up her giant mirror for us all to gaze upon. No doubt many readers of her works will feel they've heard it all before...

With writing this good, though, I for one will forgive Tepper her constant recycling of ideas (and it has to be admitted that she draws on a good many ideas from her earlier books here). Indeed, I consider this to be her best book to date, featuring an involved and complex plot, crafted with Ms. Tepper's impeccable eye for detail, as well as her uniquely wry sense of humour and wit - to say nothing of her sense of the bizarre! All of the book's many strands fall beautifully into place, constantly luring the reader on, whilst continually keeping one guessing.

As always, there is the deep, dark secret - alluded to throughout but kept carefully concealed until the end. And naturally, there are the usual shocks and jolts for the reader along the way, too. Indeed, she manages to keep the surprises coming right through to the very last page, this time.

This book may make you mad, or it may make you weep, and even at times laugh, but ultimately its true worth is like that of the special pool it features: impossible to pass through without being altered forever. Highly recommended, whether you're an established Tepper fan or just looking for a cracking read.

Rating:
Summary: An absolute gem
Review: There are those who say that Sheri Tepper has only one story to tell and that she tells it over and over again in her books. There is a degree of truth to that statement. Certainly, in "Six Moon Dance", Tepper spins her usual futuristic speculative yarn of mankind threatening a wider planetary intelligence through ignorance and greed, in a world run by a matriarchal society rigorously controlled through the creation and manipulation of religious taboos. As usual, her tale is supercharged with gender issues and cultural curiosities, as she holds up her giant mirror for us all to gaze upon. No doubt many readers of her works will feel they've heard it all before...

With writing this good, though, I for one will forgive Tepper her constant recycling of ideas (and it has to be admitted that she draws on a good many ideas from her earlier books here). Indeed, I consider this to be her best book to date, featuring an involved and complex plot, crafted with Ms. Tepper's impeccable eye for detail, as well as her uniquely wry sense of humour and wit - to say nothing of her sense of the bizarre! All of the book's many strands fall beautifully into place, constantly luring the reader on, whilst continually keeping one guessing.

As always, there is the deep, dark secret - alluded to throughout but kept carefully concealed until the end. And naturally, there are the usual shocks and jolts for the reader along the way, too. Indeed, she manages to keep the surprises coming right through to the very last page, this time.

This book may make you mad, or it may make you weep, and even at times laugh, but ultimately its true worth is like that of the special pool it features: impossible to pass through without being altered forever. Highly recommended, whether you're an established Tepper fan or just looking for a cracking read.

Rating:
Summary: Slow Start But Fun Reading
Review: Things I liked about this book: the imaginative cultures and scenery; the way Ms. Tepper wove the plot together at the end; the Questioner character. Things I felt needed improvement: character development - I found it hard to care about the characters; plot-driven ‹ because the plot was so intricate I felt little time was given to character development; slow-start - I didn't "get into" the story until after about 250 pages. Overall, I'm glad I gave this book a chance because it got interesting mid-way through. I felt the characters had the potential to be more interesting but because there were so many of them and such an involved plot, I didn't feel like I got to know them. Would like to see more books with these characters in further adventures. I will probably give other of Ms. Tepper's books a shot to be fair.

Rating:
Summary: Bland, Boring, and Slow
Review: This book is clearly written by an experienced, confident writer. Unfortunately, the writer also seems to be running out of steam in this book: I found it rather bland and boring and slow. I've read quite a few other books by Tepper, and in comparison, this one is unexciting and predictable.

The only thing I really liked in the book was the idea of the Consorts (or Hunks, as they were called) and how they were portrayed. Too bad all we get is the idea. The young protagonist Mouche is sold to be trained as a Consort, and we sit through a number of lectures with him: lectures on Earth history, human nature, the local cultures, the war between the sexes, how to be a good Consort, etc. etc. Basically, in the society Tepper creates, women get a good deal because they are scarce: men must buy their contracts, and even then, the women get to have Consorts after they have had a specified number of children.

Tons of other ideas are thrown into the book, but nothing really struck me as new. I don't mind recycled ideas if they are well-developed, but that was not the case in _Six Moon Dance_. Too many of the ideas are just presented through lectures, some directly to the reader.

The aliens were boring. The most interesting thing about them was their one-phrase descriptions in the opening cast of characters. Gestalt aliens and star-travelling aliens are nothing new. People enslaved and treated as invisible is another hoary cliche (all right, it was done better than average, here, but I expected better of Tepper.)

The justice machine/android/artifially created person (the Questioner), made to enforce someone's idea of fairness and civilization, was another one of those old ideas. That such a creation might be feared, might judge its own creators unworthy, that such a creation might turn out to be more human than expected, are all familiar (even from watching Doctor Who and Robocop!). Tepper simply doesn't do enough with it.

The same could be said of the quota clones and the History Houses on Earth. People with exceptional talents get cloned and trained for that. Is genetics destiny? The dancer clone wonders about it. The clones are brought up without real parents and family. But all the characters do is sit around and talk about it. The History Houses are supposed to reproduce various eras of earth history, but they aren't very accurate. Yeah, yeah. The article I read in the newspaper about people doing this here and now in the twentieth century was more interesting than _Six Moon Dance_. Why? I think because those were real people described in the newspaper.

The characters in _Six Moon Dance_ lacked the spark of life. They seemed to be stock Tepper characters, and not fleshed out enough. I didn't really care what happened to them. I kept setting the book down and skipping sections, but Tepper's sense of humor did keep me reading long enough to finish.

Well, this review makes it sound like a terrible book. I don't think it is. It just wasn't as compelling as many of Tepper's other books.

Rating:
Summary: Could not put this down
Review: This book is long, with complex characters, confusing story lines, and I could not put it down. Tepper creates a multi-faceted world with well-developed characters. She plays with gender. She explores ethical, cultural, sociological, and political issues. It is a wondrous book.

I have just recently discovered Sheri Tepper - she is a wonderfully creative, imaginative, good writer. I am ordering all her books.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent themes and philosophies. Mediocre adventure.
Review: This book was fantastic in terms of presenting ideas. It was meaty, thick, you can really sink your teeth into it. You can *learn* from this book, about sexuality, gender issues, dancing, environmentalism. It's chock full of facts, thoughts, philosophies. I loved it for this reason. As far as its descriptive detail it is not an evocative story... No brilliant or rich imagery, no character you completely fall in love with, no plot that makes you breathless with expectation. Those aspects are present, and fairly solid, but not extraordinary. I would recommend this book to those who take an interest in the world-building and sociological aspects of science fiction, and predict it will be something of a disappointment for those looking primarily for a "great ride."

Rating:
Summary: Should've been half as long. Or even shorter.
Review: This is the first Tepper book I've had the courage to finish. It's taken me two and a half weeks, three times longer than usual for a book this size. I'm not happy. Tepper has obviously mastered the gift of slow-motion storytelling. Vaguely developed characters drift in and out of the warm sludge of backstory only to announce that they are still there and may actually serve some purpose. Which they do: at the very end of the book, literally everyone comes to attend the monumental showdown; until then, all of them are ballast. Ornery Bastable first appears in Chapter 2 ... and then in Chapter 18. The Questioner is first seen in Chapter 7 ... and then again in 31.

"Six Moon Dance" begins innocuously and even promisingly. Mouche, a young boy, is sold by his poor family to a Consort House, where he will be trained to become a lover and companion for jaded women. Women are generally more respected on Newholme (the scifantasy planet on which the largest part of the story take place), because there are so few of them: they bring dowries for their parents' families, they bear and bring up children, they maintain the hearth, and they thus claim "compensatory joys" for their toils. The Newholmian society is, in general, an interesting matter: it is realistically shaped by a shortage of women and a mysterious overabundance of manual labor. It is also maintained in a functional state by a gang of social engineers, who are also the head priestesses.

Of course, this isn't what the novel is about. "Six Moon Dance" is about apocalyptic behaviors of legendary interstellar beings. It is also about six moons and some sort of dance. It is almost certainly not about any part of Mouche's training, Madame Genevois' musings, the Hags, Men of Business, or any of the characters' massive backstories. The events of chapters 7 and 9 actually form the book's backbone, though the reader has to wait until chapter 49 for an explanation.

Therein lies the "Six Moon Dance"'s greatest weakness: it's the single most padded book ever written. The reader bores of even the most original aspects of the book because of all the filler. The Newholmian social structure, designed to reduce frictions to a minimum, would make an excellent subject for a book. Here it gets absolutely lost in the two hundred and fifty pages where nothing happens.

The real plot does not come together until Chapter 36 or so. The book revives quite nicely at that point, building up tension with a staccato of revelations that seem brilliant only in light of all the previous non-events. A thrilling and melodramatic finale in which everyone acts out of character follows.

I completely agree with the necessity of providing a happy ending. A reader who has just made it through needs some time to recuperate.

It must indeed be a sing of the times that instead of reading about placating restless gods with exotic rituals, we get a book about placating giant interstellar moths with group sex.

Rating:
Summary: My favorite this year!
Review: This would be on my list for Nebula or Hugo winner for 1998. It has all my qualifiers for a great science fiction story: engaging characters, unique perspectives that throw preconceptions askew, an alien environment, and a compelling story.

Rating:
Summary: Sometimes laborious, often very thought-provoking
Review: Though I won't remember this novel as one of my favorite Tepper books, I enjoyed reading it, and I'm glad I saw it through to the end. The story seems confusing at times (though a single chapter late in the novel does clarify much of what previously had me confused), and the large number of difficult-to-pronounce proper nouns was a bit frustrating. But the story of the Timmys, the so-called "invisible people" - this is what I found compelling about the book. I think all sorts of meaningful links can be made to those "invisible people" in our own world. Factory workers in Haiti striving to produce plush "One-hundred and one Dalmations" dolls for subsistence-level pay...Workers in southeast Asia struggling to survive on the wage-slave payments they receive for sewing $150 pairs of sneakers...Our American (and more generally, our first-world) prosperity is built on the subservience of hundreds of millions of "invisible people." This is exactly the case in the novel - a planet's colonists are all aware of the Timmys, but - to a person - they are unwilling to admit that these invisible natives even exist.

Also very interesting is the novel's reliance on the compelling idea of the planetary life-form, the planetary consciousness. Tepper makes this idea work very effectively in Six Moon Dance (again, despite the confusing names), and her writing caused me to think again about the popular Gaia theory discussed here on our own planet.

All in all, definitely worth reading, though I would certainly place Gibbon's Decline and Fall, The Family Tree, Grass, and Shadow's End before it on my list of Tepper favorites.