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Land of the True Game #1-3
The True Game by Sheri S. Tepper
Award-winning and bestselling fantasy author Sheri S. Tepper has been hailed as "one of the genre's best writers" by Publishers Weekly. Here is the masterwork that launched her career, the series that anticipated the Dungeons and Dragons gaming phenomenon, the epic story of the most dangerous game of all.
Paperback
First published June 1, 1996
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876 people want to read
About the author
Sheri S. Tepper
74 books1,080 followersSheri Stewart Tepper was a prolific American author of science fiction, horror and mystery novels; she was particularly known as a feminist science fiction writer, often with an ecofeminist slant.
Born near Littleton, Colorado, for most of her career (1962-1986) she worked for Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood, where she eventually became Executive Director. She has two children and is married to Gene Tepper. She operated a guest ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
She wrote under several pseudonyms, including A.J. Orde, E.E. Horlak, and B.J. Oliphant. Her early work was published under the name Sheri S. Eberhart.
Born near Littleton, Colorado, for most of her career (1962-1986) she worked for Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood, where she eventually became Executive Director. She has two children and is married to Gene Tepper. She operated a guest ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
She wrote under several pseudonyms, including A.J. Orde, E.E. Horlak, and B.J. Oliphant. Her early work was published under the name Sheri S. Eberhart.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews
April 29, 2013
One of the most unique book series I've ever read. I read it first as a younger person when I opened the first of nine books (there are even more in side stories) and just when you think you understand where it's going or what's its point is, the world opens up a bit more, the themes and character needs and wants becomes a bit more complex and you are drawn yet deeper into an amazingly complex world. The central characters are beautifully complex and appealing. While the dangerous and evil characters in spite of their alien nature reflect the worst of human behaviors and emotions. Tepper, in all her books, has very strong opinions about human behavior and the environment, but as always leaves you in great hope that humans will learn and grow and there is a happy ending to be had... even if not this very minute. I've had these books for many years and they are old and much loved and duct taped together. I never tire of dipping back in. I guarantee it is like nothing else you might read and worth every minute.
~ ChrisD
The True Game: Kings Blood Four/Necromancer Nine/Wizard's Eleven
Sheri S. Tepper
~ ChrisD
The True Game: Kings Blood Four/Necromancer Nine/Wizard's Eleven
Sheri S. Tepper
May 23, 2007
"The True Game" is a compilation of Sheri S. Tepper's first three novels "King's Blood Four," "Necromancer Nine," and "Wizard's Eleven," all released from 1984 through 1985, and the first part of what became a nine-novel set; the other two belonging to the "Mavin the Manyshaped" trilogy, and the "Jinian" trilogy.
I have to say that I am biased towards these novels as that purchased "King's Blood Four" back when it was first released, and at that time I was still both a young-ish reader (14-years-old), and a young writer. I enjoyed the books so much that, when they were stolen (my ex-husband's car was stolen with all of my Tepper books in a box inside), I forked out the extra money to replace them, as well as purchase more.
"The True Game" is mainly fantasy set in a medieval-style world, with some surprising sci-fi elements thrown in as we follow Peter, a young man in his adolescence, growing both in age and experience to find out what his "talent" is in a world where everything is a "game" and those with any ability to survive have "talents."
By the word "Game," one could say "battle" or "fight" instead. There are always those "gaming" against one another, plotting, planning, fighting even in an underhanded fashion. And there are rules!
By the word "Talents," one could also say things such as "supernatural powers," each one, or each mix of several earning the person who wields them a title, as well as a formal dress they are expected to wear. A person who is a telepath, for instance, is called a Demon. A person who can fly is an Armiger.
For those who are "Gamers" in the sense of playing table-top role-playing games such as the classic Dungeons and Dragons, I have a feeling that you would enjoy this series immensely.
I have to say that I am biased towards these novels as that purchased "King's Blood Four" back when it was first released, and at that time I was still both a young-ish reader (14-years-old), and a young writer. I enjoyed the books so much that, when they were stolen (my ex-husband's car was stolen with all of my Tepper books in a box inside), I forked out the extra money to replace them, as well as purchase more.
"The True Game" is mainly fantasy set in a medieval-style world, with some surprising sci-fi elements thrown in as we follow Peter, a young man in his adolescence, growing both in age and experience to find out what his "talent" is in a world where everything is a "game" and those with any ability to survive have "talents."
By the word "Game," one could say "battle" or "fight" instead. There are always those "gaming" against one another, plotting, planning, fighting even in an underhanded fashion. And there are rules!
By the word "Talents," one could also say things such as "supernatural powers," each one, or each mix of several earning the person who wields them a title, as well as a formal dress they are expected to wear. A person who is a telepath, for instance, is called a Demon. A person who can fly is an Armiger.
For those who are "Gamers" in the sense of playing table-top role-playing games such as the classic Dungeons and Dragons, I have a feeling that you would enjoy this series immensely.
February 1, 2021
This combined trilogy is written in a classic mythbuilding fantasy style that reminds me of Tolkien/Pratchett/Le Guin, that is to say many details are littered throughout the narrative but no sentence is superfluous. It's like a lifetime has passed in the hour that you've been reading it. Even if the details are not clear in that section of the trilogy, it all makes sense in the end. It also feels like Tepper wrote what she wanted to write with no dictating hand of a publisher with dollar signs for eyes, the hallmark of a lot of polished modern sci-fi. The main character, a bewildered and naive teenager, explores the length and breadth of the world, sees all kinds of brilliantly described things, experiences all manner of phenomena and manages, in the first person, to divulge all this to the reader without breaking the credibility of the persona. More incredible still is the way in which Tepper, through her teenage narrator's unreliable PoV, conveys the nuances and fallibility of the other characters. Quite a feat!
July 2, 2012
First off, this review is somewhat less than objective as this book holds a great deal of nostalgia value for me. I first read this book almost 25 years ago, shortly after reading the Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped - which is actually a prequel and written later, and at the time it opened me up to a new style of literature and a very different brand of fantasy writing. I have re-read The True Game many times over the years, and whenever I do it is always through a certain filter which takes me back to that first read.
The True Game is Tepper's first book, and in it you can see the prototype for many of her ideas and themes which run through pretty much all of her other books - feminism, social conscience, and environmentalism to name just a few which spring to mind. We also see the blending between fantasy and science fiction, and many of the same story-telling tools. While the novel is perhaps somewhat raw in style, and some of her later books are technically tighter and have stronger characterisation and better prose, this really is the quintessential Tepper and the ideas behind the tale, and the story itself and the world she builds are as exciting today as they were all those years ago.
The story itself is told through the eyes of Peter, a sheltered teenager, in the land of the True Game, where some people are 'Gamesmen' and have special or magical powers. Their interactions often are through conflict of duels or wars, and their society is governed by the rules of the 'Game'. When Peter gets used as a minor piece in a game of subterfuge the safety of his school house is shattered and he soon finds himself aborad in the wider world, and on a journey of more than one dimension.
While this is Tepper's first book and it was only later on she went on to write the Mavin trilogy and the Jinian trilogy (which are stronger and better books to be honest - but together the series forms an entire whole), and the Mavin series is the prequel which is set decades before the events of the True Game, if you can get hold of the Chronicles then you should do so and read them first. The Jinian series comes afterwards and ties up the loose ends which True Game leaves and eliminates that slight feel of disatisfaction which comes at the end of the book with a few too many things being left undeveloped. Sadly, both these series have been out of print for a long time now and are increasingly difficult to find.
At the end of the day, a must read for any fan of Sheri S. Tepper, and highly recommneded for those who are looking for thinking fantasy and a book which will stay with you for years to come.
The True Game is Tepper's first book, and in it you can see the prototype for many of her ideas and themes which run through pretty much all of her other books - feminism, social conscience, and environmentalism to name just a few which spring to mind. We also see the blending between fantasy and science fiction, and many of the same story-telling tools. While the novel is perhaps somewhat raw in style, and some of her later books are technically tighter and have stronger characterisation and better prose, this really is the quintessential Tepper and the ideas behind the tale, and the story itself and the world she builds are as exciting today as they were all those years ago.
The story itself is told through the eyes of Peter, a sheltered teenager, in the land of the True Game, where some people are 'Gamesmen' and have special or magical powers. Their interactions often are through conflict of duels or wars, and their society is governed by the rules of the 'Game'. When Peter gets used as a minor piece in a game of subterfuge the safety of his school house is shattered and he soon finds himself aborad in the wider world, and on a journey of more than one dimension.
While this is Tepper's first book and it was only later on she went on to write the Mavin trilogy and the Jinian trilogy (which are stronger and better books to be honest - but together the series forms an entire whole), and the Mavin series is the prequel which is set decades before the events of the True Game, if you can get hold of the Chronicles then you should do so and read them first. The Jinian series comes afterwards and ties up the loose ends which True Game leaves and eliminates that slight feel of disatisfaction which comes at the end of the book with a few too many things being left undeveloped. Sadly, both these series have been out of print for a long time now and are increasingly difficult to find.
At the end of the day, a must read for any fan of Sheri S. Tepper, and highly recommneded for those who are looking for thinking fantasy and a book which will stay with you for years to come.
February 15, 2023
Well, here's a name I've not heard in a long time.
From an author/reader standpoint, Tepper and I go back a bit. Years ago she had struck me as a SF/fantasy author worth exploring in more detail, especially for her feminist and ecologically-oriented takes on the genre, which still weren't a super-common thing when she was writing at her peak. So I wound up getting a bunch of her books, starting with one of her more renowned, "The Gate to Woman's Country", and then proceeding to branch out into her other books, some of which could be grouped into trilogies although a lot of them stood alone. Being how critically acclaimed she seemed to be, I expected to have a grand ol' time, or at least a thought-provoking one.
Unfortunately that's not quite how it went.
You can go dig up past reviews if you want all the gory details but what it came down to was that while Tepper the writer was extremely talented, Tepper the essayist had all the subtlety of an avalanche trying to sneak up on you, if a rushing pile of snow and rock could also lecture you about modern gender roles or the planet or who knows what else. At her best she gave you something to chew over while also making you reflexively cringe away ("The Gate to Women's Country" is probably the best example of this "hmm"/"eww" approach, with its treatment of homosexuality falling squarely into the latter category) but over time that ratio gradually sloped over to the "cringe" side of things like an elephant deciding to sit on one bucket of a scale. Sure, its technically measurable but its definitely going to give you skewed results, like your favorite folk singer trying to sing their delicate songs during a heavy metal festival.
The degree of this varied over time and at its worst would completely overshadow her considerable talent as a SF writer but the end result was that you had to tiptoe through her back catalog carefully and sort of brace yourself like an astronaut about to experience face-melting G-forces. There was a point where I did wonder why I was subjecting myself to these (that said, "Grass" stuck with me for a while) especially since every time I thought I was done another one would show up in my queue, forcing me to sigh and go forth unto the breach once again.
That last one was probably years ago and yet, here we are again. And while Tepper's writing is still Tepper's writing perhaps in the time elapsed since then I've grown more to appreciate her prose gifts a bit more while not letting all the other stuff bother me. But I've also grown more crotchety with age, so, probably not.
In a nice bit of poetry we're dipping into a series that dates from the very beginning of her SF/fantasy writing career (something I always found interesting about her is she didn't write this stuff until much later in her life with her first genre book coming when she was in her mid-fifties) so in a sense we're looking at a more embryonic Tepper instead of the more, er, opinionated writer she would eventually become. This was in the early eighties, where the true Tepper Unbound probably didn't come into being until "The Gate to Women's Country" arrived at the end of the decade, which means that she's still figuring stuff out and at the very least hasn't learned to use her ideas as a relentless battering ram.
Instead its oddly, refreshingly, pure fantasy with only the vaguest sprinkle of SF elements to make you think that this might have oriented anywhere but from magicland. A trilogy in the finest fantasy tradition even if it never quite feels like a trilogy as much as a loosely shaped plot scooped into three different books, with enough spillover leaking that you'll probably feel like you're missing something. And chances are that's true as Tepper, new as she was to this, apparently didn't lack for ambition and thus has formed this as a trilogy of trilogies, with each one featuring a different main character, with the temporal perspective of events shifted slightly so you get some before/after along with the different POV. This series (collected as "The True Game") was the first published but holds down the middle from a timeline standpoint, with the other two trilogies showing you what two other characters were doing when they weren't stuck in this plot.
With that said, I have no idea if reading all nine books improves the series at all. As far as I know (and I reserve the right to be all "Just kidding!" in a few years if I dig these out from somewhere) I never got the other two omnibuses collecting the rest of the series so I may be getting somewhat of an incomplete experience reading these the way I am. But by the same token, a trilogy should be able to stand on its own and not require me to read six other tangentially related books to really "get" it. All I gots is this, so this is all I'm going to deal with.
What we gots is a series that is a bit hard to get into because from the start it feels like people are using the same words that we do but those words have different meanings. Our narrator is Peter, who is relaying these events from some point in the future (so you know he survives in some form although except for maybe one moment he's never in dire peril) but when we encounter him in the book he's a teenager at a school devoted to teaching students how to play "The True Game", which seems to involve magic even if the magic is disguised as people shouting out random moves like they're trying to convince someone else they learned how to play chess via "Magic: The Gathering" or poorly translated Internet videos. It doesn't take too long before we find out that most everyone with the ability will eventually manifest a Special Talent that typically falls into one of several Dungeons and Dragons approved categories (eventually we get a chart showing the character clas-I mean, titles of the various combinations of traits . . . all to make it easier to run that eventual "True Game" campaign you've been asking for) and Peter is still on the road to figuring out what his might be. But there's no real hurry.
Until suddenly there is. An icky episode of honest-to-goodness instructor/student grooming (it comes early and yes, its disturbing) gets Peter to the point where he's nearly killed and that seems to sort of kickstart the plot as Peter goes on a journey with a couple friends to another school, meets some new friends along the way and really doesn't all that much to justify what exactly it is we're doing here.
The first book in particular in this series is a bit of a tough slog. Tepper's skill at world-construction and prose weren't completely evident by this point and so there are quite a few moments where the book starts to feel impenetrable as everyone talks about games and you feel like you've stumbled on a book that may be a mainstream read in a parallel universe but sure as heck isn't in this one. Peter at this point is not the most vivid of storytellers and it seems like the book is hoping you'll find the setting so fascinating that you'll overlook the fact that you often have no idea what everyone is getting so excited about, especially as the characters aren't that memorable (the healer they eventually pal around with cries a lot but it took me most of two books to realize she's only about twenty-one . . . the cook does liven things up quite a bit though) and the plot doesn't feel like a plot as much as Things Happening. Did you know there's also "immutables", a whole clan of people whose presence can suppress the magic powers of everyone else? No? Don't ask me what it means, because I never understood it either.
The mechanics of all this are probably the biggest burdens the book saddles you with because try as I might I just don't know how any of this works and it feels like much of the first book depends on you at least somewhat grasping. But there's not much to hold onto here . . . I get that I don't need a rules book or a flow chart or a long bit of exposition but I'd hope I'm smart enough to figure this out organically and sadly, I am not. But I don't feel like that's totally my fault!
Like most examples of this kind of thing it works better when an actual goal helps to bring things into focus, so Peter getting captured by a mutilated dude who everyone keeps seeing as not-face-shredded but may entirely not be on the right side of sanity (or have Peter's best interests in mind) at least gives people viable reasons to do stuff, even if that stuff ultimately results in a giant battle with more of those shouted chess moves, like two wrestlers who just stand at opposite corners of the ring and snarl weird phrases at each other, until one of those phrases decapitates somebody or blows up a chair or something.
Early on it makes for what I can best describe as a "blocky" experience, the story often feels like its working extra hard to not engage you on any level. Part of this may be because Tepper was still relatively new at this . . . as much as we all like to think that we can just suit up some dudes in armor, put another set in wizard robes and make some dragons circle overhead and call that a fantasy novel, there's a little more to it than that. And there are times when it feels like Tepper is doing her best to tweak the genre but because she perhaps hasn't fully worked out the rules (so she can subsequently break them) the results feel a bit overbaked without any of the studied goofiness that someone like Doris Lessing brought to her attempts to write SF. Sometimes a fish out of water learns its got lungs for air and other times its just gasping.
Matters do improve as we move into the second book. Peter starts to migrate to "has incredible powers, doesn't know how to use incredible powers" with the aid of some handy gamepieces . . . the threats get a little more serious (both the Cap O'Stupidity and The Boots of Ow do have a real sense of "uh-oh" about them) and when his mom shows up things get taken up a notch. Yes, Peter has a Mysterious Past but for once the revelation actually improves things as his mom is one of the bright spots in the trilogy (and eventually gets her own trilogy, which may be why she kind of vanishes after a while) and having Peter interact with someone who isn't a) emotionally unbalanced or traumatized and b) seems to have some idea of what's going on and what the rules are does a lot to make the novel feel more like its trying to tell you a story and less like its getting ready to fight you.
It helps that Tepper dials up the weirdness substantially, with probably the book's most memorable sequence. Set in a remote area and featuring bizarro beings with names like Tallman and Fatman, it changes the tone from "okay fantasy" to "strangely menacing" because it seems to arrive from an area well past left field. It also sets the book on the path that will take the trilogy to the end, with some vague SF overtones that are constantly feinted at without ever arriving at the sweet spot where "tantalizing mystery" and "satisfying explanation" intersect.
This aspect seems to be where Tepper's heart ultimately lies as, once teased, the book tends to veer hard in that direction but whatever she's trying to do here doesn't seem be quite as original as she thinks it is (at least "Doctor Who" stories tinker with this concept) and try as she might she can't distinguish it enough to convince us that we need to care about it. If the world isn't what these people think it is, then what of it? She plays around with the idea that all the gameplaying has messed people up significantly and while there's some truth to that (the source of all those tiny gamepieces isn't good!) its hard to tell if an alternate would be any better or what that alternative would even be. In a sense that's a departure from what her writing would eventually become, where the book would leave no doubt in your mind what this world should like. Here she's a bit more subtle but at the cost of clarity. I barely understand the world that exists on the page here, imagining what an altered version would look like seems to take more imagination than I currently possess.
It’s a direction, though, which is enough to carry you through the rest of the series. By this point it kept me reading, even if I was more curious than fascinated. Tepper manages to give Peter a young-old vibe in his narration (especially as it relays to Silkhands the healer) but brings in one of the more interesting characters far too late in the narrative (she winds up being the star of the third trilogy so that was probably intentional) so even though she makes her presence felt it comes across as strangely tacked on. But it leads to some of the more honest conversations in the book, interesting enough that you wish Tepper has gone this route earlier and ditched all the weird SF aura stuff that haunts the edges of the book without making much of an impact.
By the time we hit the climax old friends who mean nothing to us have returned and the trilogy hints at its own extension . . . Peter and the lady who seems to be his new companion might have fun stories ahead of them but the book cuts out just when that starts to get tantalizing.
It winds up being frustrating, ultimately, because it feels like all these pieces are there for an offbeat fantasy series but Tepper just doesn't have the ability to push it those extra few inches into "weirdly memorable" territory so instead it sits there, floating in the water like a boat without a breeze. What mysteries exist aren't unspooled in a teasing enough fashion to give the whole series a "what's really going on here?" vibe and when revelations do arrive they don't have much of an impact beyond "Okay, guess that explains that." The little bit of promise it shows when Peter and his mom go into the wacky castle isn't sustained over the course of the rest of the book, so there's this sensation of waiting for something to happen that will blow this series open and kick it into high gear. I feel like we need things to be a little more shrouded, a touch of an ache that she only achieves in passing moments and never quite sustained. This is a series that should be vulnerable enough so you can feel when it hurts but its all kind of numb.
And yes, I'm going to hate myself for saying this, but its one of the few times where I've read Tepper where she isn't actively pushing Something to Say and the book does suffer for it. Maybe if she got too up on schooling us the series would have become unreadable but without the vision she'd bring to her later novels, for better or for worse, the whole affair comes across as a bit hollow. The aspects of Tepper novels that both enthralled and irritated the living crap out of me still come to mind years later . . . here she's just purely storytelling and while that would be a strong point of her writing later she's nowhere near the peak of her abilities yet so it renders everything just kind of . . . there. I know there might be a certain level of "careful what you wish for" here and I'm sure in some parallel universe there's a review of an alternate version of this novel that just has me screaming "Why Sheri whyyyy" over and over again. But even that's a reaction of sorts, which is more than you can say here. Where its nice its . . . nice. And where its not its just "eh". Perhaps the other two trilogies bring matters into sharper focus but I shouldn't have to commit to nine books when the first three haven't blown my mind . . . it’s the difference between making you ask for more and promising more of what you didn't wish for. It’s the wide open glory that is Calvinball coupled with someone who insists on writing down rules first, even ones that don't make sense. And by the time you can convince them that they're perhaps missing the point you just don't feel like playing anymore.
From an author/reader standpoint, Tepper and I go back a bit. Years ago she had struck me as a SF/fantasy author worth exploring in more detail, especially for her feminist and ecologically-oriented takes on the genre, which still weren't a super-common thing when she was writing at her peak. So I wound up getting a bunch of her books, starting with one of her more renowned, "The Gate to Woman's Country", and then proceeding to branch out into her other books, some of which could be grouped into trilogies although a lot of them stood alone. Being how critically acclaimed she seemed to be, I expected to have a grand ol' time, or at least a thought-provoking one.
Unfortunately that's not quite how it went.
You can go dig up past reviews if you want all the gory details but what it came down to was that while Tepper the writer was extremely talented, Tepper the essayist had all the subtlety of an avalanche trying to sneak up on you, if a rushing pile of snow and rock could also lecture you about modern gender roles or the planet or who knows what else. At her best she gave you something to chew over while also making you reflexively cringe away ("The Gate to Women's Country" is probably the best example of this "hmm"/"eww" approach, with its treatment of homosexuality falling squarely into the latter category) but over time that ratio gradually sloped over to the "cringe" side of things like an elephant deciding to sit on one bucket of a scale. Sure, its technically measurable but its definitely going to give you skewed results, like your favorite folk singer trying to sing their delicate songs during a heavy metal festival.
The degree of this varied over time and at its worst would completely overshadow her considerable talent as a SF writer but the end result was that you had to tiptoe through her back catalog carefully and sort of brace yourself like an astronaut about to experience face-melting G-forces. There was a point where I did wonder why I was subjecting myself to these (that said, "Grass" stuck with me for a while) especially since every time I thought I was done another one would show up in my queue, forcing me to sigh and go forth unto the breach once again.
That last one was probably years ago and yet, here we are again. And while Tepper's writing is still Tepper's writing perhaps in the time elapsed since then I've grown more to appreciate her prose gifts a bit more while not letting all the other stuff bother me. But I've also grown more crotchety with age, so, probably not.
In a nice bit of poetry we're dipping into a series that dates from the very beginning of her SF/fantasy writing career (something I always found interesting about her is she didn't write this stuff until much later in her life with her first genre book coming when she was in her mid-fifties) so in a sense we're looking at a more embryonic Tepper instead of the more, er, opinionated writer she would eventually become. This was in the early eighties, where the true Tepper Unbound probably didn't come into being until "The Gate to Women's Country" arrived at the end of the decade, which means that she's still figuring stuff out and at the very least hasn't learned to use her ideas as a relentless battering ram.
Instead its oddly, refreshingly, pure fantasy with only the vaguest sprinkle of SF elements to make you think that this might have oriented anywhere but from magicland. A trilogy in the finest fantasy tradition even if it never quite feels like a trilogy as much as a loosely shaped plot scooped into three different books, with enough spillover leaking that you'll probably feel like you're missing something. And chances are that's true as Tepper, new as she was to this, apparently didn't lack for ambition and thus has formed this as a trilogy of trilogies, with each one featuring a different main character, with the temporal perspective of events shifted slightly so you get some before/after along with the different POV. This series (collected as "The True Game") was the first published but holds down the middle from a timeline standpoint, with the other two trilogies showing you what two other characters were doing when they weren't stuck in this plot.
With that said, I have no idea if reading all nine books improves the series at all. As far as I know (and I reserve the right to be all "Just kidding!" in a few years if I dig these out from somewhere) I never got the other two omnibuses collecting the rest of the series so I may be getting somewhat of an incomplete experience reading these the way I am. But by the same token, a trilogy should be able to stand on its own and not require me to read six other tangentially related books to really "get" it. All I gots is this, so this is all I'm going to deal with.
What we gots is a series that is a bit hard to get into because from the start it feels like people are using the same words that we do but those words have different meanings. Our narrator is Peter, who is relaying these events from some point in the future (so you know he survives in some form although except for maybe one moment he's never in dire peril) but when we encounter him in the book he's a teenager at a school devoted to teaching students how to play "The True Game", which seems to involve magic even if the magic is disguised as people shouting out random moves like they're trying to convince someone else they learned how to play chess via "Magic: The Gathering" or poorly translated Internet videos. It doesn't take too long before we find out that most everyone with the ability will eventually manifest a Special Talent that typically falls into one of several Dungeons and Dragons approved categories (eventually we get a chart showing the character clas-I mean, titles of the various combinations of traits . . . all to make it easier to run that eventual "True Game" campaign you've been asking for) and Peter is still on the road to figuring out what his might be. But there's no real hurry.
Until suddenly there is. An icky episode of honest-to-goodness instructor/student grooming (it comes early and yes, its disturbing) gets Peter to the point where he's nearly killed and that seems to sort of kickstart the plot as Peter goes on a journey with a couple friends to another school, meets some new friends along the way and really doesn't all that much to justify what exactly it is we're doing here.
The first book in particular in this series is a bit of a tough slog. Tepper's skill at world-construction and prose weren't completely evident by this point and so there are quite a few moments where the book starts to feel impenetrable as everyone talks about games and you feel like you've stumbled on a book that may be a mainstream read in a parallel universe but sure as heck isn't in this one. Peter at this point is not the most vivid of storytellers and it seems like the book is hoping you'll find the setting so fascinating that you'll overlook the fact that you often have no idea what everyone is getting so excited about, especially as the characters aren't that memorable (the healer they eventually pal around with cries a lot but it took me most of two books to realize she's only about twenty-one . . . the cook does liven things up quite a bit though) and the plot doesn't feel like a plot as much as Things Happening. Did you know there's also "immutables", a whole clan of people whose presence can suppress the magic powers of everyone else? No? Don't ask me what it means, because I never understood it either.
The mechanics of all this are probably the biggest burdens the book saddles you with because try as I might I just don't know how any of this works and it feels like much of the first book depends on you at least somewhat grasping. But there's not much to hold onto here . . . I get that I don't need a rules book or a flow chart or a long bit of exposition but I'd hope I'm smart enough to figure this out organically and sadly, I am not. But I don't feel like that's totally my fault!
Like most examples of this kind of thing it works better when an actual goal helps to bring things into focus, so Peter getting captured by a mutilated dude who everyone keeps seeing as not-face-shredded but may entirely not be on the right side of sanity (or have Peter's best interests in mind) at least gives people viable reasons to do stuff, even if that stuff ultimately results in a giant battle with more of those shouted chess moves, like two wrestlers who just stand at opposite corners of the ring and snarl weird phrases at each other, until one of those phrases decapitates somebody or blows up a chair or something.
Early on it makes for what I can best describe as a "blocky" experience, the story often feels like its working extra hard to not engage you on any level. Part of this may be because Tepper was still relatively new at this . . . as much as we all like to think that we can just suit up some dudes in armor, put another set in wizard robes and make some dragons circle overhead and call that a fantasy novel, there's a little more to it than that. And there are times when it feels like Tepper is doing her best to tweak the genre but because she perhaps hasn't fully worked out the rules (so she can subsequently break them) the results feel a bit overbaked without any of the studied goofiness that someone like Doris Lessing brought to her attempts to write SF. Sometimes a fish out of water learns its got lungs for air and other times its just gasping.
Matters do improve as we move into the second book. Peter starts to migrate to "has incredible powers, doesn't know how to use incredible powers" with the aid of some handy gamepieces . . . the threats get a little more serious (both the Cap O'Stupidity and The Boots of Ow do have a real sense of "uh-oh" about them) and when his mom shows up things get taken up a notch. Yes, Peter has a Mysterious Past but for once the revelation actually improves things as his mom is one of the bright spots in the trilogy (and eventually gets her own trilogy, which may be why she kind of vanishes after a while) and having Peter interact with someone who isn't a) emotionally unbalanced or traumatized and b) seems to have some idea of what's going on and what the rules are does a lot to make the novel feel more like its trying to tell you a story and less like its getting ready to fight you.
It helps that Tepper dials up the weirdness substantially, with probably the book's most memorable sequence. Set in a remote area and featuring bizarro beings with names like Tallman and Fatman, it changes the tone from "okay fantasy" to "strangely menacing" because it seems to arrive from an area well past left field. It also sets the book on the path that will take the trilogy to the end, with some vague SF overtones that are constantly feinted at without ever arriving at the sweet spot where "tantalizing mystery" and "satisfying explanation" intersect.
This aspect seems to be where Tepper's heart ultimately lies as, once teased, the book tends to veer hard in that direction but whatever she's trying to do here doesn't seem be quite as original as she thinks it is (at least "Doctor Who" stories tinker with this concept) and try as she might she can't distinguish it enough to convince us that we need to care about it. If the world isn't what these people think it is, then what of it? She plays around with the idea that all the gameplaying has messed people up significantly and while there's some truth to that (the source of all those tiny gamepieces isn't good!) its hard to tell if an alternate would be any better or what that alternative would even be. In a sense that's a departure from what her writing would eventually become, where the book would leave no doubt in your mind what this world should like. Here she's a bit more subtle but at the cost of clarity. I barely understand the world that exists on the page here, imagining what an altered version would look like seems to take more imagination than I currently possess.
It’s a direction, though, which is enough to carry you through the rest of the series. By this point it kept me reading, even if I was more curious than fascinated. Tepper manages to give Peter a young-old vibe in his narration (especially as it relays to Silkhands the healer) but brings in one of the more interesting characters far too late in the narrative (she winds up being the star of the third trilogy so that was probably intentional) so even though she makes her presence felt it comes across as strangely tacked on. But it leads to some of the more honest conversations in the book, interesting enough that you wish Tepper has gone this route earlier and ditched all the weird SF aura stuff that haunts the edges of the book without making much of an impact.
By the time we hit the climax old friends who mean nothing to us have returned and the trilogy hints at its own extension . . . Peter and the lady who seems to be his new companion might have fun stories ahead of them but the book cuts out just when that starts to get tantalizing.
It winds up being frustrating, ultimately, because it feels like all these pieces are there for an offbeat fantasy series but Tepper just doesn't have the ability to push it those extra few inches into "weirdly memorable" territory so instead it sits there, floating in the water like a boat without a breeze. What mysteries exist aren't unspooled in a teasing enough fashion to give the whole series a "what's really going on here?" vibe and when revelations do arrive they don't have much of an impact beyond "Okay, guess that explains that." The little bit of promise it shows when Peter and his mom go into the wacky castle isn't sustained over the course of the rest of the book, so there's this sensation of waiting for something to happen that will blow this series open and kick it into high gear. I feel like we need things to be a little more shrouded, a touch of an ache that she only achieves in passing moments and never quite sustained. This is a series that should be vulnerable enough so you can feel when it hurts but its all kind of numb.
And yes, I'm going to hate myself for saying this, but its one of the few times where I've read Tepper where she isn't actively pushing Something to Say and the book does suffer for it. Maybe if she got too up on schooling us the series would have become unreadable but without the vision she'd bring to her later novels, for better or for worse, the whole affair comes across as a bit hollow. The aspects of Tepper novels that both enthralled and irritated the living crap out of me still come to mind years later . . . here she's just purely storytelling and while that would be a strong point of her writing later she's nowhere near the peak of her abilities yet so it renders everything just kind of . . . there. I know there might be a certain level of "careful what you wish for" here and I'm sure in some parallel universe there's a review of an alternate version of this novel that just has me screaming "Why Sheri whyyyy" over and over again. But even that's a reaction of sorts, which is more than you can say here. Where its nice its . . . nice. And where its not its just "eh". Perhaps the other two trilogies bring matters into sharper focus but I shouldn't have to commit to nine books when the first three haven't blown my mind . . . it’s the difference between making you ask for more and promising more of what you didn't wish for. It’s the wide open glory that is Calvinball coupled with someone who insists on writing down rules first, even ones that don't make sense. And by the time you can convince them that they're perhaps missing the point you just don't feel like playing anymore.
September 19, 2009
I wanted to read this book because I had read of her books before (Beauty) and loved it, so I thought I would give this a try. It’s her debut trilogy and for the price of one! The first novel was extremely difficult to get through. There are a huge number of names, places, and other things just thrown at you and if you’re not paying close attention you’ll get lost very quickly, which I was. But I kept reading because there was just something about that kept pushing me forward. Perhaps it was the writing, her world, or the final push towards the end. The second book was a lot better and way more gripping than the first. I loved the whole seeking out his mother and then the sudden dark turn at the end. The last book was great. I loved reading about all the different talents Peter used through his blues (you’ll find out what these are in the book) and the final battle.
Her writing style and story telling methods aren’t as polished as her later novels but you can see the bright gem of talent shining through. The characters were each given their own unique voice and all of them had a chance to shine. Character development could especially be seen through Peter as he went from a naïve, innocent boy to the more hardened mature one at the end. Her world building is fantastic and well thought out. Everything seems to have logical reason to exist or work as they do, and there was no point in time where I had to suspend belief.
This book for the most part is hard/epic fantasy, so I’m guessing a lot of name throwing is normal. Thankfully, there’s a chart later on in the book to help you refer to. It later adds in a touch of speculative fiction showing Tepper’s future genre crossing she’s famous for. A neat book, while tough in the beginning, it proves a rewarding read in the end.
Her writing style and story telling methods aren’t as polished as her later novels but you can see the bright gem of talent shining through. The characters were each given their own unique voice and all of them had a chance to shine. Character development could especially be seen through Peter as he went from a naïve, innocent boy to the more hardened mature one at the end. Her world building is fantastic and well thought out. Everything seems to have logical reason to exist or work as they do, and there was no point in time where I had to suspend belief.
This book for the most part is hard/epic fantasy, so I’m guessing a lot of name throwing is normal. Thankfully, there’s a chart later on in the book to help you refer to. It later adds in a touch of speculative fiction showing Tepper’s future genre crossing she’s famous for. A neat book, while tough in the beginning, it proves a rewarding read in the end.
February 15, 2015
I was in the mood for a re-read and so I revisited the world of Mavin Manyshaped and Jinian StarEye. The Omnibus The True Game contains 3 novels centered around Peter, who we discover partway through the book is Mavin's son. But thanks to a serendipitous discovery, he is much more than a just a shape shifter, more than just a boy coming of age.
While some of the writing is unpolished, King's Blood Four, which is Sheri S. Tepper's first published novel, showcased the creativity that keeps me coming back to her work. Others have written books based on chess games, others have written fantasy novels with multiple psychic powers, Kings Blood Four uses both as the backdrop for a clever coming of age story.
The beginning of Necromancer Nine, the 2nd book in the trilogy, was weaker, and unfortunately contains a sexual awakening scene which is just explicit enough that I will not be handing these books to my newly-turned 11 year old. Without the implications of rape/forced sex, the rest of the fare in the books is appropriate to middle-grade readers.
I liked the journey told in Wizard's Eleven, but found the villain to be badly developed and the ending unsatisfying. While I can't say much without spoilers, I think parts of the resolution were insufficiently forshadowed and came out of nowhere. But we got to meet the connecting characters that lead to the other 6 books set in the same enchanting world.
In total these three short juveniles make for a satisfactory introduction to Sheri S. Tepper and the clever world of The True Game.
While some of the writing is unpolished, King's Blood Four, which is Sheri S. Tepper's first published novel, showcased the creativity that keeps me coming back to her work. Others have written books based on chess games, others have written fantasy novels with multiple psychic powers, Kings Blood Four uses both as the backdrop for a clever coming of age story.
The beginning of Necromancer Nine, the 2nd book in the trilogy, was weaker, and unfortunately contains a sexual awakening scene which is just explicit enough that I will not be handing these books to my newly-turned 11 year old. Without the implications of rape/forced sex, the rest of the fare in the books is appropriate to middle-grade readers.
I liked the journey told in Wizard's Eleven, but found the villain to be badly developed and the ending unsatisfying. While I can't say much without spoilers, I think parts of the resolution were insufficiently forshadowed and came out of nowhere. But we got to meet the connecting characters that lead to the other 6 books set in the same enchanting world.
In total these three short juveniles make for a satisfactory introduction to Sheri S. Tepper and the clever world of The True Game.
January 29, 2016
I have always enjoyed Sheri S Tepper's novels immensely. She is such a master of her craft, a kind of voice I miss when I haven't read her for a while. However, 'The True Game' trilogy really stood out to me. It could be because these three books are her debut novels and it is pure genius. She really did start out her writing career with a bang.
These are utterly unique fantasy/sci-fi novels, and will easily appeal to both genres' hard-reading fans. It is complex in so many ways, with well-rounded characters who grow more convoluted and interesting as the novels progress; a place where the laws of the universe are so magical, intriguing and yet believable that I often found myself in awe of Tepper's imagination.
And this is the part that really left me speechless: All three books play off in the same world, have mostly the same characters in them and progress the same story-line, yet they read completely different from each other, redirecting the reader's focus in every book, exposing and revealing new and larger themes and other aspects of the story and the world at every turn.
It makes me want to read even more than I do.
These are utterly unique fantasy/sci-fi novels, and will easily appeal to both genres' hard-reading fans. It is complex in so many ways, with well-rounded characters who grow more convoluted and interesting as the novels progress; a place where the laws of the universe are so magical, intriguing and yet believable that I often found myself in awe of Tepper's imagination.
And this is the part that really left me speechless: All three books play off in the same world, have mostly the same characters in them and progress the same story-line, yet they read completely different from each other, redirecting the reader's focus in every book, exposing and revealing new and larger themes and other aspects of the story and the world at every turn.
It makes me want to read even more than I do.
July 17, 2010
A really solid piece of science fantasy, impressive as a debut trilogy and showing quite a bit of the author Tepper would eventually become. The world is fascinating, both when it seems magical in the first novel and when it becomes recognizably science fiction in the second two. The set pieces are filled with wonder and a bit of horror, and the narrator does convincingly grow up over the course of the story. The supporting cast of characters includes quite a few really fascinating ones, and there are only two characters that totally missed the boat for me. The narrative voice is occasionally uneven, with young-Peter narrating at times and older-Peter taking over other times, without much rhyme or reason, but that can (and should) be overlooked given the many other strengths this trilogy has.
June 14, 2022
Interesting characters and interactions. Slightly predictable plot line, but quite a fun story that I enjoyed.
August 2, 2010
In a world where psychic abilities run rampant and laws are only rules of the Game that those with psi-talent play for power and advancement using living people as game pieces. A young orphan boy named Peter grows up in the schoolhouse with the children of other Gamelords learning the lists of psi-talents - telepathy, levitation, telekinesis, shape-shifting among others - and their moves in the Game while waiting for his own talent to emerge. But when he is caught in the middle of a game of power that almost kills him, Peter is sent away to study at another schoolhouse only to find himself pursued by those who would use his talent for their own gain.
On route Peter stumbles upon a set of carved game pieces and a book, a long lost treasure that will change his fate, set in motion plans long past laid out and reveal the true history of their world.
In this omnibus of Tepper’s first 3 novels of a series of nine,be prepared for fantasy and science fiction to mix with tremendous results and let the Game begin!
On route Peter stumbles upon a set of carved game pieces and a book, a long lost treasure that will change his fate, set in motion plans long past laid out and reveal the true history of their world.
In this omnibus of Tepper’s first 3 novels of a series of nine,be prepared for fantasy and science fiction to mix with tremendous results and let the Game begin!
March 18, 2015
OH. MY. GOD! I absolutely loved this book. It is one that will stay with my forever. It is part coming of age, part quest, part fantastic imagery, wonderful characters, interesting and unique world and most of all a compelling storyline. I'm almost sorry I finished it because I am loath to leave that world.
April 7, 2020
I quite enjoyed book 1, but disliked book 2, and book 3 couldn’t quite recover from that. Would be willing to try her again, though.
March 19, 2019
Another book recovered from a long-buried TBR pile, this one is a trilogy from the start of Sheri Tepper's career, and a fascinating look at power in the form of in-born Talents. A lost colony that was first established to isolate and safely study a mind-reader has now had a thousand years to develop a population heavily seeded with Talents, but those gifts have been enlisted in the True Game. Now, no one remembers the reasons why, but Gaming is the law of the land, and its rules have very little to do with justice - that's nothing but an almost forgotten word. You're born with Talent, and therefore a Gamesman and a player, or else you're a pawn, and the index of Talents runs to more than a thousand categories. But those are all based on the original 11 Major Talents, with a 12th created later to counter some of their worst excesses. Now, a 13th Talent has appeared in the form of a boy named Peter who must learn to play the Game, to understand and control his Talent, and somehow restore the original Gamesmen and women as well as their ideals. It's time for the end of the True Game. I really enjoyed the books, which are chock full of chess moves and alien creatures unlike any I've seen before, though I would not call it hard SF. More like science fantasy.
June 17, 2017
A hero's journey; swords and sorcerers; a clever scene parodying academia (they've had X-thousand years to maintain traditions while utterly forgetting the purpose): what more could you want? Well, maybe, especially in the 3rd book, a little less people just riding along talking..? It seemed to bog down for a while. But these are early works of someone who went on to write some great SF. If you're into fantasy and SF, and find a cheap copy, give it a try. You'll be able to find it in our Little Free Library if you hurry.
August 29, 2022
I thought the world was quite interesting, but hardly explored. I wish there had been more about the Game - but there was so little! Concepts stressed in book 1 were forgotten in book 2 and barely touched upon in book 3, like the cold associated with the Game. The female characters save Didir were rather underdeveloped and for the most part, lacked any real personality or agency until near the end.
And unfortunately Tepper had some extremely unpleasant opinions which were made quite clear in book 2, so I can't rate this book highly nor recommend it.
And unfortunately Tepper had some extremely unpleasant opinions which were made quite clear in book 2, so I can't rate this book highly nor recommend it.
October 1, 2022
I thought I had read all of Sheri Tepper’s work years ago, but stumbled across this compilation and realized I had missed it. Glad I found it, as it lives up to her usual excellent standards. Interesting characters, good story, thought provoking concepts.
Feels like a fantasy then more is revealed. That’s typical Tepper, to build in some complexity that appears unexpectedly (and well into the story) and causes a major shift in how you see the world she’s created. One of the things that make her books fun to read.
Feels like a fantasy then more is revealed. That’s typical Tepper, to build in some complexity that appears unexpectedly (and well into the story) and causes a major shift in how you see the world she’s created. One of the things that make her books fun to read.
July 30, 2017
Love this author! Though this first trilogy is not as strong in structure as her later books, it wonderfully foreshadows her recurring themes of religion, feminism, a workable society and environmental concerns, among others. In this trilogy, she explores justice and law in a world that closely mirrors the situation in our own world. Sheri Tepper was a master of fantasy/science fiction.
November 5, 2017
I love this premise and this world. I’m going to read all the other series. I don’t think this first series is perfect, but it’s good enough to make me remember it years after my first reading and still like it enough on the second reading to hunt down all the others.
June 9, 2024
3.5
A very fun read. Sometimes unnecessarily complicated and too many names thrown at you at once, but lovable characters that felt realistic. It had a fairly predictable plot but was still interesting enough to want to keep reading.
A very fun read. Sometimes unnecessarily complicated and too many names thrown at you at once, but lovable characters that felt realistic. It had a fairly predictable plot but was still interesting enough to want to keep reading.
September 28, 2020
This is a great book for people who love a really detailed world build
April 30, 2022
One of my favourite books of all time. The whole series is amazing and tells different aspects of the story. Well worth re-reading
October 24, 2024
Absolutely loved it the characters were captivating the story amazing the twists drew me in over and over again definitely a new favorite of mine. Until we meet again Peter
May 22, 2014
Peter is a young man at a magic school--but it's not just any magic school, and it's not just any world. Peter is a member of a society formed around a chess-like game called "the True Game." His school is for children of the powerful magic-users who are the higher-powered "pieces" in the game. Through betrayal by a close older friend, a teacher at the school, Peter is forced to leave the school and sent to another school, several days' journey from where he has lived his entire life. Through that journey, Peter begins to discover just how real the True Game is, and perhaps how little sense it makes, as well. A foundling, Peter knows nothing about his parentage, but he soon comes to find that his lineage is more important than he could ever know--and that he has a gift that is truly unique among players of the True Game.
As the series progresses, we find out more and more about Peter, his parents, and where exactly the True Game originated. We also start to discover that the players of the True Game may not be the original inhabitants of the planet, and that there are layers of mystery underneath the game of 'wizard's chess' that consumes its players.
A friend loaned me this series and, having read a lot of Tepper's later novels, I was surprised at how truly pure fantasy this trilogy was... at least until I started to see the science fiction elements underlying the fantasy.
A warning for those who don't read a book if the first few pages don't draw them in: I was initially a little put off by how much Tepper seemed to want her reader to swallow without any initial explanation. Just hang in there for a chapter or so. The vagueness of her descriptions, I believe, is meant to put you in a position where you're on a sort of even footing with the protagonist, who, to be honest, is pretty naive about his entire world. Everything becomes more clear and more engaging quickly, and the rest of the series makes it more than worth it.
As the series progresses, we find out more and more about Peter, his parents, and where exactly the True Game originated. We also start to discover that the players of the True Game may not be the original inhabitants of the planet, and that there are layers of mystery underneath the game of 'wizard's chess' that consumes its players.
A friend loaned me this series and, having read a lot of Tepper's later novels, I was surprised at how truly pure fantasy this trilogy was... at least until I started to see the science fiction elements underlying the fantasy.
A warning for those who don't read a book if the first few pages don't draw them in: I was initially a little put off by how much Tepper seemed to want her reader to swallow without any initial explanation. Just hang in there for a chapter or so. The vagueness of her descriptions, I believe, is meant to put you in a position where you're on a sort of even footing with the protagonist, who, to be honest, is pretty naive about his entire world. Everything becomes more clear and more engaging quickly, and the rest of the series makes it more than worth it.
May 1, 2008
I read this trilogy (this version of the novel is 3 books in one and it is the actual version I read) in a matter of days and it drug me back into the Sci-F-/Fantasy world kicking and screaming. I had read the genre during my days as a bookseller but by the time I stopped buying books with my employee's discount, the field had lost my interest..... too many books by the same people with the same ideas. But a friend (whose taste in books I liked) recommended this and it was what I needed to try sci-fi/fantasy again. That genre name may be trouble. Why mix the two? Why shelve them together? I think the two could be segregated and the results would be generally good. But the True Game does make a case for keeping the fields together.
The novel is set in a very fantasy-feeling setting, with the characters living predestined to play a part in the Game (of Life?). The big question is what part do they play (literally, as each discovers in their late teens what skills they have and are then assigned a role... think RPG 'classes' though with many more options). This story follows one particular young man as he starts to figure out not only what his role in the game is but what the game is actually about (which leads into a more sci-fi realm). It was a good, solid read and shows the author's ability to be very non-mainstream in her story. Many of Tepper's other novels are similarly unique. Some are more readable than others. This is a my personal favorite of her books thus far.
The novel is set in a very fantasy-feeling setting, with the characters living predestined to play a part in the Game (of Life?). The big question is what part do they play (literally, as each discovers in their late teens what skills they have and are then assigned a role... think RPG 'classes' though with many more options). This story follows one particular young man as he starts to figure out not only what his role in the game is but what the game is actually about (which leads into a more sci-fi realm). It was a good, solid read and shows the author's ability to be very non-mainstream in her story. Many of Tepper's other novels are similarly unique. Some are more readable than others. This is a my personal favorite of her books thus far.
June 17, 2008
Sheri Tepper really is incomparable. This is a collection of her first three novels, King's Blood Four, Necromancer Nine, and Wizard's Eleven. Because King's Blood Four was the first book Tepper published, this was many people's introduction to Tepper's work. The series takes place in a world where a subset of the population are endowed with superhero-like powers. The books follow Peter through his coming of age in which he develops unprecedented powers and has to choose whether to accept this and how to take a role in shaping his world. While this book is able to inject certain messages, it falls more firmly on the side of escapism than many of Tepper's novels. It does gradually shift from a fantasy to a sci fi perspective on the world and what is taking place. As always her characters are compelling and manage to be confused, paralyzed, and even a little pathetic without becoming annoying. The world does bridge over into the surreal at times also without becoming annoying, although I did have difficulty envisioning some of the things she describes simply because she approaches them as familiar (which they would be to Peter), while they are actually incredibly foreign.
October 27, 2019
3½ stars. This earlier trilogy by Tepper features some of the same themes she developed in her later books, especially that of justice as opposed to obeying the rules (laws). She shows the reader that distinction clearly without preaching; the philosophy never gets in the way of the story. On the surface, this is a fairly standard fantasy novel with the epic struggle between
Although human nature yearns for rules and procedures, it also consistently bends/twists/breaks those rules for personal gain. Justice is simultaneously more difficult and more important. Another theme is the way those with power (in these stories, with Talent) use those without (the pawns) as if they are expendable, unimportant lesser beings. In the Land of the True Game, these pawns are both men and women but this same injustice is specifically aimed at women in the domain of the Magicians (who hail from "Home", which is presumably Earth).
I find these themes interesting, but they were more thoroughly threshed out in some of her later novels (the Grass trilogy, Northside and Southside, etc.)
Although human nature yearns for rules and procedures, it also consistently bends/twists/breaks those rules for personal gain. Justice is simultaneously more difficult and more important. Another theme is the way those with power (in these stories, with Talent) use those without (the pawns) as if they are expendable, unimportant lesser beings. In the Land of the True Game, these pawns are both men and women but this same injustice is specifically aimed at women in the domain of the Magicians (who hail from "Home", which is presumably Earth).
I find these themes interesting, but they were more thoroughly threshed out in some of her later novels (the Grass trilogy, Northside and Southside, etc.)
April 17, 2013
This is yet another shuffling of High Fantasy tropes. I was able to predict all the outcomes as soon as they were hinted at. The writing is competent and nothing too objectionable. Most of my objections are about problems with the genre - so I'll give this book a get out of gaol card. It will probably appeal to young adult readers who haven't read at lot of this material. Hey - I remember a time when I was reading everything by Brooks and Eddings ... even those TSR Dragonlance calandar people (who were they??) - so I am not going to caste stones.
I believe this writer went on to have more to say about the role of women in medieval fantasy - and there are some hints she was moving in this direction in the First True Game trilogy, but I don't think i need to stick around for those installments.
There were a few odd notes - the section about the midwives aborting fetuses who will grow up to have no souls .....that was a bit ideologically iffy. I think I can see what Tepper was aiming at here, but it was a poorly picked target.
I believe this writer went on to have more to say about the role of women in medieval fantasy - and there are some hints she was moving in this direction in the First True Game trilogy, but I don't think i need to stick around for those installments.
There were a few odd notes - the section about the midwives aborting fetuses who will grow up to have no souls .....that was a bit ideologically iffy. I think I can see what Tepper was aiming at here, but it was a poorly picked target.
November 19, 2015
The boy-becomes-a-powerful-wizard story is a standard one, but, narrated from the p.o.v. of Peter, the teenage protagonist, The True Game is far from generic. Set in a land of magic with a complex magical hierarchy,the story concerns Peter, an orphan attending a school of magic. When he's betrayed by a friend and lover, he's forced to flee for his life. Each power in the land of the True Game has its name and place. Dragon, Necromancer, Seer, Tragamor, Sorcerer and so on. Peter is soon traveling with a healer girl named Silkhands and his friend Yarrel, in the company of the High King.
Haunted by Mandor, the Prince who betrayed him, Peter learns he's the son of a famous Shapeshifter, Mavin the Manyshaped, and he, too, has that power. As Peter travels deeper into his bizarre world, maturing along the way, he learns how to master his powers despite betrayals and terrifying enemies. Peter is a likable and intelligent protagonist, the characters he meets along the way are complicated, and the True Game is a marvelous world to lose oneself in.
Haunted by Mandor, the Prince who betrayed him, Peter learns he's the son of a famous Shapeshifter, Mavin the Manyshaped, and he, too, has that power. As Peter travels deeper into his bizarre world, maturing along the way, he learns how to master his powers despite betrayals and terrifying enemies. Peter is a likable and intelligent protagonist, the characters he meets along the way are complicated, and the True Game is a marvelous world to lose oneself in.
November 25, 2008
I really liked this story, though she has a really interesting, unique way of writing that sometimes I liked and sometimes I felt was hard to follow. It's almost told like a fable. If I didn't know better I'd think that she was a British author w/out the letter U thrown into every other word! :o)
The story is incredibly original however and I couldn't wait to see what happened next.
I bought this book because I read the Jinian books years and years ago and I was lost in a lot of it because I hadn't read these and had no idea what this "Game" was that she kept referring to. Now that I've read these though I want to read the Mavin books and then reread the Jinian series to see how I interpret it this time.
Overall, while strangely written I highly recommend it to any fantasy reader looking for an original story!
The story is incredibly original however and I couldn't wait to see what happened next.
I bought this book because I read the Jinian books years and years ago and I was lost in a lot of it because I hadn't read these and had no idea what this "Game" was that she kept referring to. Now that I've read these though I want to read the Mavin books and then reread the Jinian series to see how I interpret it this time.
Overall, while strangely written I highly recommend it to any fantasy reader looking for an original story!
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