Rating: 
Summary: Mostly Good, But the Ending...
Review: To start with, this book sat on my nightstand waiting for me to gird my loins sufficiently so I could withstand another bout of Tepper's over-riding, vitriolic hatred of men and religion. Imagine my surprise when I started reading, to find that her standard psychoses and neuroses were almost entirely missing. All that was left was another of her excellent stories. Unfortunately, 50 pages short of the end of this 500 page book, Tepper reverts to form and blasts out what's REALLY been happening in her standard anti-male, anti-religion, pro-wacko-liberal manner. Boom. She instantly destroyed an excellent book. Based solely on the ending, I'd rate this as only one star. But, since I'd rate the other 450 pages of the book as five stars, I've decided to give it a compromise rating of three stars.Why, oh why do Tepper's editors let her continue frothing at the mouth this way? Without her irrational hatreds, almost any of her works, including this one, would rank up there as some of the best writing of the era. This constant spoiling of otherwise amazing writing is a crime.
Rating: 
Summary: New Tepper and Old Tepper combined!
Review: _The Visitor_, Tepper's latest novel, is filled with plot reminscent of some of her earliest works. As in her 'True Game' series, Tepper tells the story of a Far-future world that has lost technology. Both stories have characters that gradually realize that they are avatars of mythic figures. For all the similarities though, the two tales are very different. Sheri Tepper has grown in her abilities over the past 15-20 years. She is able to write a more cohesive and fluid novel now, making _The Visitor_ what one reviewer called 'Tepper's most accessible novel yet'. _The Visitor_ will appeal to fans of both fantasy and science fiction. Fantasy fans will enjoy the mysterious pillars that reveal character's 'true selves' to them. They will thrill to the gigantic monsters running over the earth. Meanwhile, SF fans will enjoy the hidden research lab where humans (who survived a giant cataclysm that sent the earth into its current state) monitor humanity and record its history. _The Visitor_ is an enjoyable novel, but it's not a wholly successful one. There is a sameness running through it that catches up to the reader by the end. I think that it could have been a much tighter novel were 50 pages of exposition cut. In the end, _The Visitor_ is an entertaining book that had the potential to be a standout novel.
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