The Visitor

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and thought-provoking!
Review: An excellent read, as always. A page-turner, as always. Packed with interesting and creatively presented criticisms of politics, religion, and the weaknesses of humankind. I often get the feeling that Tepper should be writing non-fiction, since her stories are so full of essay-worthy social criticism, but I'm glad she chose fiction after all, because it's great to encounter an author (of any age, although I've heard her call herself a brontosaurus!) who's not at all timid about putting real meat into her work. Thank you, Sheri.

Rating:
Summary: Very Good
Review: Another great book from Sheri Tepper. My favorite so far has been The Fresco but all are wonderful. Her invention/creativity is astounding. I'm not a SF fan but def make an exception for these! So glad I stumbled across her books...

Rating:
Summary: Tepper Does It Again
Review: Ever since I picked up a copy of Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country, all other science fiction writers have paled in my estimation. Nobody else addresses the big issues with such insight, usually by throwing you headlong into an alien/futuristic world where your confusion mirrors the confusion of her characters as they struggle to find meaning, with all the various threads only gradually coming together...but always in the most satisfying way. The Visitor is another astounding read from Ms Tepper...long may she reign!

Rating:
Summary: science fiction at its bleakest best
Review: Her older stepsister Rashel, who cares nothing about her except to insure she does not get in her way, raises (a loose verb for Cinderella-like slavery) Disme Latimer following the strange deaths of family members. As Rashel becomes conservator of a renowned Museum, Disme finds a book written by an ancestor that explains the "magic" that followed the asteroid catastrophe that destroyed the planet. The book hints that her distant relative Nell, author of the tome, still miraculously lives.

Disme knows she must hide this book from Rashel who would turn her and her book in to the authorities to further her own career. The youth begins to learn the ancient magic. If the government finds out what she is doing, they would "bottle" her away and her relative would gladly turn her in. However, THE VISITOR who caused the pandemic destruction in the long ago twenty-first century is apparently returning. The world needs a hero, but could that person be a so young, too frightened, and clearly all alone female hiding her activities from her guardian?

THE VISITOR is science fiction at its bleakest best as Sheri S. Tepper paints a dark panorama of a distant future filled with repression and gloom. The story line is as complex and furnished with intelligent concepts as much as any genre novel contains yet THE VISITOR is also loaded with action and deeply drawn charcaters. As Zager and Evans break into song, readers will agree that Ms. Tepper has written a tale that will be on everyone's short list as a candidate for the genre's book of the year.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I've ever read.
Review: I was passing through the fantasy/sci-fi section looking for a new book to read since I hadn't truly read anything in about 2 years. The Visitor looked interesting, so I took a chance, purchased it and started reading it on my lunch break.

This book is entirely enthralling. Sheri S. Tepper has a way with words that just sucks you right into the book and keeps you going a mile-a-minute along with it. The descriptions of the monsters and reactions people have are exquisite.

The post-apocalyptic Earth she portrays, however, is entirely realistic if you sit and think about it. New deities, old ways of thinking re-born, it could all happen. If you're looking for a good read, and can deal with a bit of violence along the way, definitely pick up The Visitor.

Rating:
Summary: an unlikely champion.
Review: In the present, there is something - a Visitor - flying through space, on a direct path with the Earth. Nell Latimer, an astronomer, is sensing something bizarre; a strangely cult-like religion is sweeping the Earth... which may or may not be enticing the Visitor. Nell, being a highly rated astronomer, joins a group that will help the Earth after It arrives. They sleep for years at a time, awaking to stay awake for a few more, and then going back to sleep... always watching over the people outside of their underground shelter.

700 years or more in the future, things aren't doing all that great. The Demons bottle humans, taking a cell or two to keep for when the final day of reckoning comes. The humans are God-fearing and believe that this arcane ritual (known, quite obviously, as bottling), when performed upon anyone who is hurt or even disagrees with the Regime, their government.

Disme Latimer lives with her father, aunt, step-mother, and step-sister. When her father dies, she discovers that something bizarre is going on with Rashel, her step-sister - she seems to have been bound to the Hetman, who was a person - or thing - with great powers, most of them evil. Rashel becomes aware that she is not permitted to injure or kill Disme (due to unknown reasons at the time), but psychologically harming Disme is perfectly fine. And so she does, by destroying everything Disme loves.

But Disme decides to get away, to free herself from Rashel. And then she discovers the legend of Dezmai of the drums, who may or may not be her. Not to mention how the apocolypse seems to be coming back... and she's one of the few who will be able to prevent it.

I think this is a fantastic book, despite the fact that it's been done approximately nine thousand times before. The apocolypse thing is quite a good plot, I'll admit, but there are just so many of them that I really don't usually care to read them. However, this is a good speciman of the genre; it's well-written, with a believable plot. The worst things about this book is that it really isn't well organized, going from the past to the future and back again. Also, nothing really seems to occur until the last hundred pages, when thing really begin to heat up... but that's all forgivable, as this is quite a good novel.

Rating:
Summary: A disappointment
Review: Not up to her usual standard. I just kept reading it to see what would happen, but it was not gripping and TOO GORY!! If you like this author, read Gate to Womens Country, Beauty and some of the others; this wasn't what I was expecting.

Rating:
Summary: A disappointment
Review: Not up to her usual standard. I just kept reading it to see what would happen, but it was not gripping and TOO GORY!! If you like this author, read Gate to Womens Country, Beauty and some of the others; this wasn't what I was expecting.

Rating:
Summary: One of Tepper's Strongest
Review: One thousand years from now -- give or take -- the Earth and her population is recovering from a 21st century asteroid impact that wiped out a good deal of life forms and introduced some things hitherto unknown. Humanity survives in a number of independent city-states, each with its own particular values. One of these is Bastion, settled by religious fundamentalist survivors of the strike. In Bastion, the inhabitants' lives are bound up by dehumanizing rules and dogmas. The main occupation is the search for "the Art," real magic that, as an article of faith, existed before the asteroid strike wiped everything out and will be rediscovered some day. Unfortunately, the search for true magic is so bound in rules, regulations, and dogmas that when it does appear, it is immediately destroyed. Born in Bastion, Disme' Latimer is an odd changeling who neither understands nor subscribes to the dogmas surrounding her. In the process of escaping from her abusive step-sister, she discovers that she is not alone in her feelings and that, in fact, her personal struggles and those of her friends are part of something very much greater than any of them.

To readers familiar with Tepper's work, _The Visitor_ reads something like a cross between _Raising the Stones_ and _A Plague of Angels_, although the tone is both more serious and less angry than that of either of the previous novels. There is not a lot of humour to leaven the message, yet the simple, matter of fact way that even horror is presented only makes it that much stronger. Tepper does not try to sway the reader to her point of view; she merely states her case and leaves you to make up your own mind.

Like many of her previous books, _The Visitor_ is concerned with the nature of god and the nature of evil. Unlike some writers, however, Tepper makes it plain that in her view true evil does, in fact, exist and is so seductive that even well-meaning people can fall prey to it. The way to combat it, according to Tepper, is to learn to think objectively, without falling prey to any dogma or "ism," even those that seem, to outward apperances, benign. One of the ways she shows this is by extrapolating various dogmas to their farthest, and sometimes frightening, conclusions and then basing societies upon those conclusions. Her findings at times stike one as fantastic, but they are nearly always horribly probable.

Although Tepper's worlds may contain almost Utopian societies, she mostly bases her stories in places with serious problems; thus the task of her characters is to overcome those problems. Her vision of the future at times seems bleak, but invariably she holds out hope that things will get better. She does not, however, offer any simplistic solutions for betterment. This may be troubling for readers who like everything to be wrapped up in a nice, neat package with clear instructions as to what's right and what's wrong.

_The Visitor_ is a book that every thinking person should read.

Rating:
Summary: Strong and vibrant
Review: Tepper has a strong and vibrant voice in her books that knits incredible, terrifying, beautiful worlds together. The Visitor is a shining example.

A book to answer the questions of what happens to us in the very near future after the Earth is struck by an asteriod, it leaps eons to raise issues of science, magic and science as magic. Its underpinnings are futuristic and fantastic, but its story is an emotionally honest tale of the herione's life, disasters, and future consorting with "gods."

The characters in this book are wonderfully broad and deep, providing true warp and weft to a fantastic story. Tepper reaches into each of them, pulls out their loves, dreams and fears, and lays them bare for reweaving into a solid story. The imagery of the book's unbelievable violence is tempered by the delicate empathy in its touching humanity. Strong, warm, bloody, icy: you care about the people in this book.

Strongly recommended, I wish it had never come to an end.