Rating: 
Summary: Not Tepper's Best
Review: I enjoyed reading Sheri S. Tepper's "Grass" and "Raising the Stones," but this one isn't so great. The main antagonist organization is a little over the top. One person like this I can buy, but a whole political party? The book is somewhat depressing as well, and doesn't say much about the future besides "evil, bad, doom." However, I CAN read this book without getting incredibly bored or compulsively throwing it across the room, which is more than I can say about much fiction out there today. I heartily reccomend the aforementioned Tepper books, but I'd avoid this one.
Rating: 
Summary: GREAT!
Review: I have 50 to 75 pages to go in this novel, but unless the ending disappoints me, I think it's a great novel! I really enjoy reading a novel that has such strong female characters in it. I think it would be even better if there were more than just the 3 or 4 male characters that are supportive of women. I'm glad to come across a author that writes good feminist fiction, particularly science fiction. I definitely plan on searching out her other books and reading them !
Rating:
Summary: Not one of Tepper's better accomplishments
Review: I have always enjoyed Tepper's writing. However, in this work she attacks people (Catholic Church,etc) without just cause. The feminist overtones have always been apparent in her books, but this time she has gone too far. I have just started The Family Tree, and I hope it goes in a different direction from Gibbon's.
Rating: 
Summary: clunky and paranoid
Review: I have enjoyed most of Tepper's other books, but gave up on this one after about 50 pages, then skipped to the end to see how it came out (which I almost never do).A theme running through many of her books is "[Most] men will oppress women if given the opportunity." This theme is developed in an involving manner in, for example, "The Gate to Women's Country" and "The Singer from the Sea," both of which have futuristic settings in societies different from our own. Here, however, the book is set in the US, in the very near future, so the idea of a reactionary, supernatural, Catholic-Islamic-militia conspiracy requires too much of a suspension of disbelief for THIS reader. Also, the writing is not up to Tepper's usual high standard. It is clunky and confused, and the characters are not well-developed. In short, skip this one.
Rating:
Summary: Good thoughts presented in a one-sided way are not very good
Review: I have enjoyed Tepper's work in the past, (Grass, Beauty, theGate To Women's Country, the Family Tree) and dug into this book withverve. However, while I consider myself to be a feminist, I consider myself to be an egalitarian feminist, and this book falls very short in this regard. I have written an open letter to Sheri Tepper about it, in fact, as I can find no way to contact her.
Rating: 
Summary: Wow!!!
Review: I have just founf this author and adore her. Read Womens Country and almost thru with this one; I LOVE it. She really puts masculine arrogance and the patriarchy where they really are. The time frame is wrong; it is already past the time depicted (2000) but the signs are fitting our times: i.e. the American Taliban, Ashcroft, the attacks on Wade v. Rowe.....scary!!! She is s prophet. I am 73, and wish there had been an author like this when I was younger. The characters are well written and you care about them.
Rating:
Summary: Wow!!!
Review: I have just founf this author and adore her. Read Womens Country and almost thru with this one; I LOVE it. She really puts masculine arrogance and the patriarchy where they really are. The time frame is wrong; it is already past the time depicted (2000) but the signs are fitting our times: i.e. the American Taliban, Ashcroft, the attacks on Wade v. Rowe.....scary!!! She is s prophet. I am 73, and wish there had been an author like this when I was younger. The characters are well written and you care about them.
Rating:
Summary: Good but not one of her best works
Review: I have read many of Sheri S. Tepper's books and I liked most of them, especially "The Gate to Women's Country." "Gibbon's Decline and Fall" kept me reading it and had some very strong points to make. Its characters were interesting and the plot, as I said, keeps you reading. What is missing from this book is hard to pinpoint. It is science fiction, and therefore not necessarily close to real life, so comments such as "It's not like the way it really will be in the year 2000" are invalid. What is really missing from this book is the sense of subtlety that was present in Tepper's "The Gate To Women's Country." The point of this books was thrown in your face. It is a good guess that not all of even Tepper's most loyal fans will appreciate this book, though I found it delightfully argumentative.
Rating:
Summary: You might like it, but can you forgive yourself?
Review: I liked this book, but it made me uncomfortable that I liked it. For one thing, it is so rabidly anti-male that it's guaranteed to offend anyone with a Y chromosome, and plenty of people without one. For another, it's also anti-Christian and anti-Muslim, with plenty of jabs and barbs tossed at assorted other groups. (For the record, I'm a pagan, a feminist, and bisexual, so this doesn't have anything to do with my being personally offended or having my preconceptions shaken.)
That said, Tepper's novel does offer up some intriguing ideas and theories, albeit ones so far-fetched it's difficult to see how we can apply them to our current culture. Her first mistake, I think, was setting the book in such a near future - written in 1996 and set in 2000, it's impossible to believe that society could ever have deteriorated so drastically in 4 years, much less that this could be set in any plausible near future.
Anyway, the story starts with 7 women attending college in the 50's. They are unlikely friends (so unlikely, in fact, that it's sometimes hard to understand why they're friends at all, but whatever) who make a vow to each other: each will find a pinnacle in her life to stand on, never to decline or fall from that place. Well, fast forward 40 years - Carolyn is a retired lawyer, married to one of the few "good" men in the story. Faye is a militant lesbian and a sculpter. Agnes is a nun, Jessamine a zoologist, Ophelia a doctor, Bettiann a trophy wife, and Sophy, well Sophy's dead - at least they think so. The mysterious girl whose goal in life was to figure out why women are so oppressed has mysteriously disappeared, although her voice still visits the six remaining friends. Meanwhile, society has gone down the aforementioned tubes. Women's colleges are being bombed, men are lashing women in the street, and the misogynistic Alliance is gaining political power, both in the US and internationally. Women, basically, are screwed. Then Carolyn is asked to defend a young girl who threw her newborn into a dumpster, and it all comes together.
Did I mention that I have a hard time with a book that completely excuses infanticide? I know the point Tepper was trying to make (that women are more than walking wombs), but doing it by having all her protaganists repeatedly explain why it was perfectly OK for this young mother to kill her baby is unsettling, to say the least.
That said, the scenario Tepper paints is interesting, if for nothing else in a sort of horror-chills sort of way. Sophy's origins, when they are revealed, are a stretch, but original, and bring the story back to it's fantasy roots. If you can wince your way past the worst of the male-bashing, and suspend your disbelief through most of Tepper's fanciful paranoia, you might even enjoy it - but your conscience won't.
Rating:
Summary: undecided
Review: I loved the idea of the ending, but the book was so convaluted getting there and written so as just not to be believable. I love the feminist aspects of her other works (Womens Country, Family Tree etc.) But this just seemed to be male bashing, but I looked past the anti-maleness of it and did like the message that is apparant in all her work, Take care of the Earth and respect women.
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