Rating: 
Summary: As she does superlatively, again and again, ..
Review: .. Tepper creates a world harsh to its women, padded and friendly and beneficial for and to its men. However, i found _Singer from the Sea_, for all its indifference toward the feelings, abilities, reason of its women, to be actually lighter in tone than many of Teppers earlier books.I can't fault what others have written about this book but i'd like to add one bit after this disclaimer: i'm a staunch Tepper fan. I buy her books without thought, as soon as they become available. There. Now, a criticism: what the heck was that bit at the end about returning to sea? It's a topic of discussion among evolutionary biologists, sure, but why try to weave so intricate and absorbing a topic into a book like this at the last minute? The book deserved a better ending; that topic could be a book in and of itself. The mixture was uneasy. Still, _Singer from the Sea_ was true to Tepper's style and gave unstintingly of what we readers expect from a Tepper novel.
Rating: 
Summary: FASCINATING!
Review: A very different kind of story. Written very well. I enjoyed reading it.
Rating:
Summary: FASCINATING!
Review: A very different kind of story. Written very well. I enjoyed reading it.
Rating:
Summary: I reconsidered...
Review: a while ago, I wrote a review about this book, in which I said it was a little tired. I don't quite want to take that back; it really does go over so much of the same stuff....however... I reread it a few weeks ago, and had some of the most disturbing dreams, in which I was on Haven, and female, and pregnant, and...well, the book really got to me this time. A second read through was provocative.
Rating:
Summary: I reconsidered...
Review: a while ago, I wrote a review about this book, in which I said it was a little tired. I don't quite want to take that back; it really does go over so much of the same stuff....however... I reread it a few weeks ago, and had some of the most disturbing dreams, in which I was on Haven, and female, and pregnant, and...well, the book really got to me this time. A second read through was provocative.
Rating: 
Summary: What she is not
Review: Alright, I feel compelled to voice my opinion about a certain and very annoying habit of professional reviwers. Sheri S. Tepper, and Ursula K. LeGuin, and several other female authors have been compared to and put upon the same pedestal as C. S. Lewis and Tolkien. First of all, the mythmaking of these two men are firmly rooted in their Christianity, bringing about stories that attempt (and I think brilliantly succeed)to reveal deep eternal truths and very close brushes with the numinous. That is what made their work so transcendant and unique. Tepper and LeGuin, in contrast, reveal a kind of petulent agnostisism, egoistic femenism (where men are depicted as stupid or evil), and irrational environmentalism. Although they are both excellent writers, they should owe their success to the initial success of Lewis and Tolkien who have paved the way for them.
To compare them to these deeply Christian men is to imply similarity of purpose. Nothing can be further from the truth! Two completely opposed worldviews are in conflict here!
I hope people will take note of this.
Rating: 
Summary: All in all, a very good read
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: once again the world as we know it is going to end...
Review: And now that I've gotten that out of the way... Sheri S. Tepper once again draws you into a world and introduces you to the cast of characters and sets the stage. I held tight and allowed her to lead me through each act of the play and waited for the mysteries to unravel. Any one who has read Tepper's work in the past will not be disappointed with Singer from the Sea. It amazes me how rich her characters are and how easily I believe in the world she presents to the reader. I look forward to losing myself in her next work and only hope it arrives as quickly as this one did after Six Moon Dance.
Rating:
Summary: Another wonderful story!
Review: Can you believe she's turned out yet another marvelous book, so intelligent, humorous, moving, well-written, and always teaching us stuff that we have to learn over and over again, in a way that illuminates our own lives. Incredible to read some of the negative reviews - makes me wonder if we live in the same universe!
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, complex but not entirely convincing...
Review: 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
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