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Six Moon Dance
In Six Moon Dance, veteran fantasy and science fiction writer Sheri S. Tepper tells the tale of the strange planet Newholme. An intriguing human society occupies the metal-poor planet, a society with gender values quite different from Earth, resulting from a virus that kills 50 percent of baby girls at birth. Newholmians use the best and the worst of dogma, religion, and "patriarchy" to uphold a society where men manage the money but women hold the keys to power through church, reproductive control, and their own short supply. "Family men" pay exorbitant dowries in order to gain a temporary wife, contracted for wifely duties and reproduction for a number of years. When their marriage contracts are finished, the women, relieved of duty, retire to enjoy the sexual services of male "Consorts."
The plot here involves an official Questioner who visits Newholme to investigate reports of human rights abuses, the strange native inhabitants whose biology may hold the key to human survival on the planet, and a disastrous lunar alignment. Although quite creative, Tepper's plot is simply not as gripping as the sociology and society she invents for Newholme. She uses her feminist instincts and knowledge about the sexes and religion to create a world worth taking a look at. James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award judges should be sure to take a look at Six Moon Dance for its unique take on gender roles. --Bonnie Bouman
454 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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857 people want to read
About the author
Sheri S. Tepper
74 books1,083 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 92 reviews
June 27, 2010
Tepper is an author that always engages in wondrously imaginative world-building and who weaves very complex plots with a multitude of viewpoints together seamlessly. She sometimes gets pigeonholed as an ecofeminist SF author, because ecology and gender roles are frequent topics in her novels, but she never lets her message (which is nothing more radical than that we should think of the consequences of our actions and always treat each other like human beings, rather than men and women treating each other as "other" and "alien") get in the way of telling an engaging story.
Six Moon Dance is the most complete novel I've read by her yet. The world is fascinating -- on first glance it is a matriarchy, but the relationship between the sexes is nowhere near as simple as the reader at first assumes; there is an undercurrent of unease from the very first chapter at the mention of "invisibles" and the Questioner; and all this against a backdrop of seismic activity that may or may not mean something. The characters, while never entirely fleshed out (a task nearly impossible given Tepper's propensity for perspective shifts every few pages) are both likable and relateable, and there was never a perspective I did not want to return to.
It is also a novel of big ideas, those things that SF is best at: as mentioned, it explores gender roles and human involvement with the environment; but it also weaves in an exploration of personal identity and cultural identity; justice and its enforcement and how that is affected by the experiences of the individuals acting as judges; what it means to be human; and it even does a good job at portraying a pretty convincingly alien alien race.
But what is best about the novel, the reason I can't stop smiling about it even while writing this review, is its core sense that life is absurd, and its absurdity, joyous. The climax is absolutely perfect, one of the few I've read where the fate of the world is at stake and yet I was grinning and doubled over with laughter. What is gets absolutely right is that life simply isn't worth living if you can't embrace its compensatory joys.
Six Moon Dance is the most complete novel I've read by her yet. The world is fascinating -- on first glance it is a matriarchy, but the relationship between the sexes is nowhere near as simple as the reader at first assumes; there is an undercurrent of unease from the very first chapter at the mention of "invisibles" and the Questioner; and all this against a backdrop of seismic activity that may or may not mean something. The characters, while never entirely fleshed out (a task nearly impossible given Tepper's propensity for perspective shifts every few pages) are both likable and relateable, and there was never a perspective I did not want to return to.
It is also a novel of big ideas, those things that SF is best at: as mentioned, it explores gender roles and human involvement with the environment; but it also weaves in an exploration of personal identity and cultural identity; justice and its enforcement and how that is affected by the experiences of the individuals acting as judges; what it means to be human; and it even does a good job at portraying a pretty convincingly alien alien race.
But what is best about the novel, the reason I can't stop smiling about it even while writing this review, is its core sense that life is absurd, and its absurdity, joyous. The climax is absolutely perfect, one of the few I've read where the fate of the world is at stake and yet I was grinning and doubled over with laughter. What is gets absolutely right is that life simply isn't worth living if you can't embrace its compensatory joys.
May 11, 2020
Like a lot of this author's science fiction it borders rather on fantasy and at some points severely strains the suspension of disbelief. Briefly, it is set in the far future on a human colony world where certain behaviour contravenes the moral code of the wider inter-galactic society, a code which is policed by a sort-of supermachine which is inhabited by three human brains, all with a tragic past. This Questioner arrives, bringing an entourage that includes two dancers as its human-derived intution has indicated that dancers will be useful. This is the case because certain indiginous folk called Timmys communicate largely by dancing and singing, and it transpires eventually that both of these are vital to the continued existence of the planet.
The story is very complex with a multiplicity of lifeforms and a strange and quite well realised society based around the shortage of girls/women. There are several main characters, and the narrative switches between them. Some are better realised than others, or more sympathetic. There are a number of villains also, and their origin is quite complex, but the anticipated climax where these villains might be expected to make the crisis of impending planetary destruction even worse, fizzles out entirely and is resolved far too easily. The book struck me as an ambitious mess on the whole and although there were good aspects to it, I can only award a middle of the road 3 stars.
The story is very complex with a multiplicity of lifeforms and a strange and quite well realised society based around the shortage of girls/women. There are several main characters, and the narrative switches between them. Some are better realised than others, or more sympathetic. There are a number of villains also, and their origin is quite complex, but the anticipated climax where these villains might be expected to make the crisis of impending planetary destruction even worse, fizzles out entirely and is resolved far too easily. The book struck me as an ambitious mess on the whole and although there were good aspects to it, I can only award a middle of the road 3 stars.
September 29, 2013
One of Tepper's better books, I think. And it even had a major male character without any major, horrible flaws to his humanity!
I think I would have enjoyed it a bit more if I hadn't read it directly after reading The Companions, however - it shares a lot of the same elements/themes (especially the concept of a sentient world-organism with separable, seemingly-independent parts that are actually part of the whole.)
Upon second reading:
In Six Moon Dance, Tepper introduces her readers to the world of Newholme - a colony world that has developed a unique way of dealing with the challenges that a new world has given them. In this strict society, where there are more men than women, with few exceptions, women are required to marry and bear children - but they are also socially powerful, and considered to be entitled to "compensatory joys" in the form of trained male courtesans. Unlike many feminist renditions of alternate societies, this one is very interesting, because its not simply a reverse situation, and its neither a utopia nor a dystopia - simply a different society with its own pros and cons.
On Newholme, we meet Mouche - a young man who is sold to a Consort training house due to his family's poverty, but who learns quickly to adapt and embrace his new situation.
Meanwhile, however, Newholme has come to the atttention of the Questioner - a bionic construct which exists to travel to different planets and ensure that they are adhering to certain ethical strictures. Together with a team that includes, strangely, two young ballet dancers, she sets off to inspect the situation on Newholme. But will it be the strict gender rules of their society that come under her surveillance - or have the people of Newholme been hiding something more shameful, and more strange?
The latter, of course, is the case, and the revelations that come are imaginative and interesting - but, at, times, I felt like the plot was getting a bit too complex, piling twists on top of twists, and packing too many different issues into a single book. It also gets a bit too unrealistically grotesque toward the end, with Nightbreed-like creatures who have been deformed in far-too-obviously-metaphorical ways. I enjoyed the novel, but I feel that it would have been a better book, structurally, if it stuck to the first plotline that was brought up - the society of Newholme, and the Questioner, without bringing in the multiple plot strands that appear later.
I think I would have enjoyed it a bit more if I hadn't read it directly after reading The Companions, however - it shares a lot of the same elements/themes (especially the concept of a sentient world-organism with separable, seemingly-independent parts that are actually part of the whole.)
Upon second reading:
In Six Moon Dance, Tepper introduces her readers to the world of Newholme - a colony world that has developed a unique way of dealing with the challenges that a new world has given them. In this strict society, where there are more men than women, with few exceptions, women are required to marry and bear children - but they are also socially powerful, and considered to be entitled to "compensatory joys" in the form of trained male courtesans. Unlike many feminist renditions of alternate societies, this one is very interesting, because its not simply a reverse situation, and its neither a utopia nor a dystopia - simply a different society with its own pros and cons.
On Newholme, we meet Mouche - a young man who is sold to a Consort training house due to his family's poverty, but who learns quickly to adapt and embrace his new situation.
Meanwhile, however, Newholme has come to the atttention of the Questioner - a bionic construct which exists to travel to different planets and ensure that they are adhering to certain ethical strictures. Together with a team that includes, strangely, two young ballet dancers, she sets off to inspect the situation on Newholme. But will it be the strict gender rules of their society that come under her surveillance - or have the people of Newholme been hiding something more shameful, and more strange?
The latter, of course, is the case, and the revelations that come are imaginative and interesting - but, at, times, I felt like the plot was getting a bit too complex, piling twists on top of twists, and packing too many different issues into a single book. It also gets a bit too unrealistically grotesque toward the end, with Nightbreed-like creatures who have been deformed in far-too-obviously-metaphorical ways. I enjoyed the novel, but I feel that it would have been a better book, structurally, if it stuck to the first plotline that was brought up - the society of Newholme, and the Questioner, without bringing in the multiple plot strands that appear later.
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October 16, 2021A sentient world, a shortage of women, and at some point, I lost track of what was going on.
January 17, 2017
Tepper plays with gender expectations...
This is Tepper being playful, in general. Not to say that there aren't some very dark moments and implications in the novel -- TW for body horror and sexual violence. But particularly in sections detailing the training for Hunks, young men trained to delightful companions to women who have met their contractual marital obligations, when she elucidates what might really make women happier, and why, in terms that might make sense to adolescent boys, I found her both amusing and on-point.
There's a broad cast of engaging protagonists -- The Questioner, a cyborg tasked with enforcing ethic edicts on planetary populations; two dancers, chosen to assist the Questioner in this assignment, one a cloned ballerina, the other a female impersonator from Kabuki tradition; a girl who ran away to sea and a life of disguise rather than face her expected gender role; and Mouche, a hunk in training with a special relationship to the native life of the planet -- which is much more complex than anyone thinks. There are evildoers greater and lesser, and half the fun is trying to figure out what each group thinks is going on... And then seeing how they are mistaken.
This is Tepper being playful, in general. Not to say that there aren't some very dark moments and implications in the novel -- TW for body horror and sexual violence. But particularly in sections detailing the training for Hunks, young men trained to delightful companions to women who have met their contractual marital obligations, when she elucidates what might really make women happier, and why, in terms that might make sense to adolescent boys, I found her both amusing and on-point.
There's a broad cast of engaging protagonists -- The Questioner, a cyborg tasked with enforcing ethic edicts on planetary populations; two dancers, chosen to assist the Questioner in this assignment, one a cloned ballerina, the other a female impersonator from Kabuki tradition; a girl who ran away to sea and a life of disguise rather than face her expected gender role; and Mouche, a hunk in training with a special relationship to the native life of the planet -- which is much more complex than anyone thinks. There are evildoers greater and lesser, and half the fun is trying to figure out what each group thinks is going on... And then seeing how they are mistaken.
September 14, 2020
Six Moon Dance is at once one of the silliest and grandest of Sheri S. Tepper's epic adventures. By cobbling together a cast of protagonists of various species (and robotics), from multiple far-flung worlds, and sending them on a quest to save an endangered planet, Tepper gets to showcase what she's best at: creating a number of richly-detailed worlds and their societies, then letting them clash and cooperate against an encroaching darkness.
It may be true that the Wilderneers, Tepper's Bosch-ian band of villains, are disposed of with very little hassle in this volume. And it's definitely the case that Tepper is having a huge amount of satirical fun with the education and training of her world's Hunks—highly-skilled male courtesans specialized to fulfill the needs of women in her matriarchal society. So much fun, in fact, that the book's central romance, crystalized in its last few pages, is one of the most unlikely and outright goofiest of Tepper's long career.
But the author is plainly having such fun that it would be a shame not to enjoy the ride of Six Moon Dance, and its richly-imagined worlds of the future.
It may be true that the Wilderneers, Tepper's Bosch-ian band of villains, are disposed of with very little hassle in this volume. And it's definitely the case that Tepper is having a huge amount of satirical fun with the education and training of her world's Hunks—highly-skilled male courtesans specialized to fulfill the needs of women in her matriarchal society. So much fun, in fact, that the book's central romance, crystalized in its last few pages, is one of the most unlikely and outright goofiest of Tepper's long career.
But the author is plainly having such fun that it would be a shame not to enjoy the ride of Six Moon Dance, and its richly-imagined worlds of the future.
March 21, 2008
Tepper is one of my favorite authors. This book deals with our assumptions about the roles of men and women in society. The universe is one with many races and many inhabited planets. The focus of the novel is one planet in which women have manipulated society so that there are always fewer women than men, and thus women are valued. Women do have a prescribed role in society, but after they have married for a certain period of time they are allowed "compensatory joys." These take the form of consorts, men who have been trained to be romantic, to understand and please women. I know that the shift in perspective is good since it took me a couple days of reading the book to get used to men paying "doweries" for women and not to assume it was the other way around every time I read that word. Beauty is still my favorite Tepper novel, but this book definitely supports my first statement that Tepper is one of my favorites.
June 14, 2020
2020 reread - no change to my previous opinions.
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Complex matriarchal society with surprising twists and nuances revealed by the visit of an off-world official. The role of experience in coloring our observations is well done, along with challenges to sexual stereotypes.
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Complex matriarchal society with surprising twists and nuances revealed by the visit of an off-world official. The role of experience in coloring our observations is well done, along with challenges to sexual stereotypes.
May 2, 2022
From an economics standpoint, any product that is turned into a commodity loses its value. Unless we make that commodity so scarce to change it back into something that is priceless. There are a few exceptions... Diamonds is an example of inflated value. Water is another example of how a basic necessity to live can cost so much. Why do I bring this up? Because at the heart of this story and what I came away with is... what happens to girls? This is a supposition of what to do with them when you have too many.
The "Questioner" who should have no biases is actually going to be bias based on how they were designed. This existential crisis for the Questioner is an interesting thing to behold. I read this book and thought of all the female Chinese babies which were thrown into wells to drown or aborted. I think about all the unwanted females in China when the government rolled out the 1 child policy. Which by the way, most westerns don't fully understand. I went to China, spoke with the people on the ground. There was no "killing" required or "aborting" or preventing of having more child. The farmers still had multiple children. Basically to discourage multiple children, the government made it advantageous to have only 1 child. In addition, those with more children, only the 1st child received subsides. Not only that, but government workers (which was a large portion) would be in a dead end job if they had more than 1 child. Chinese are masters at behaviour modification. Lastly, I have relatives in China that did have multiple children during these times. It wasn't ideal but it wasn't like how the States paints it. I digress.
In this story, they hidden secret of what they do female babies in interesting. I think Ms. Tepper was trying to come up with a solution as well as predict what would happen to getting rid of female babies. I think she was good at her guess. Fast forward 2 decades later from her book as well as 4 decades for China. China's population is still huge. Their female shortage though is as predicted in many ways. Other ways it is a bit mind blowing. Suffice to say, the population is kind of controlled but the society as a whole is now even more dysfunctional in some ways. Sad.
I like these books that make me think and relate it to real life issues.
The "Questioner" who should have no biases is actually going to be bias based on how they were designed. This existential crisis for the Questioner is an interesting thing to behold. I read this book and thought of all the female Chinese babies which were thrown into wells to drown or aborted. I think about all the unwanted females in China when the government rolled out the 1 child policy. Which by the way, most westerns don't fully understand. I went to China, spoke with the people on the ground. There was no "killing" required or "aborting" or preventing of having more child. The farmers still had multiple children. Basically to discourage multiple children, the government made it advantageous to have only 1 child. In addition, those with more children, only the 1st child received subsides. Not only that, but government workers (which was a large portion) would be in a dead end job if they had more than 1 child. Chinese are masters at behaviour modification. Lastly, I have relatives in China that did have multiple children during these times. It wasn't ideal but it wasn't like how the States paints it. I digress.
In this story, they hidden secret of what they do female babies in interesting. I think Ms. Tepper was trying to come up with a solution as well as predict what would happen to getting rid of female babies. I think she was good at her guess. Fast forward 2 decades later from her book as well as 4 decades for China. China's population is still huge. Their female shortage though is as predicted in many ways. Other ways it is a bit mind blowing. Suffice to say, the population is kind of controlled but the society as a whole is now even more dysfunctional in some ways. Sad.
I like these books that make me think and relate it to real life issues.
October 26, 2015
At last I have finished this beast of a novel! The impossibility of attempting to describe what is going on in this plot to another person in casual conversation is partly why I give this 3 stars - it is tremendously complicated, with many weirdly diverse threads going on and very little to tie them together for a long time at the start. The Questioner, the Hags, Mouche, Ornery, Marool Mantelby, Ellin and Bao - each of these lives are shown almost from their inception and in some detail. It's challenging to hold on to this on top of learning the complicated political atmosphere of Haraldson's edicts, the Council of Worlds, and the planet Newholme in context of this broader universe. To me, this had the feel of a Heinlein novel - obviously NOT in the sense of mirroring ANY of his personal beliefs. I say that because Heinlein has a definite set of politics and philosophical positions he wants to explore and expound upon, and he builds his science fiction and characters around those ideas like a thin shell around an egg. The platform and the ideas at the core are far more significant than any plot point or person, and it shows in the world building that results from such an approach. This is feminism and gender studies painted with a heavy hand; no so much posing questions to the reader as it is presenting firmly held beliefs about the answers. Some of the graphic imagery, like the Hieronymous Bosch creations from "the pond" that came out as long penises with broken men attached that had almost no brain left to direct it with, just instinct... those were a tad overdone. That said, if you like China Mieville's Perdido Street Station and other books of that ilk, and wish there were more science fiction novels that explore alternative realms of sexual structures within human and alien cultures, or if you want some interesting approaches to the problem of colonization and native species, look no further! This book could be your cup of tea! Alas, it was not mine. Personally I preferred Sheri Tepper's *other* weird novel about alien/human hybridization, sexual politics, brutal colonization of native cultures, and spooky murdering beast creatures, namely: Grass.
June 26, 2015
OMG! This is amazing, complicated fiction with passages I flagged because they had the truth of pure poetry. It started out with what seemed to be an intriguing series of short stories, the lives of characters who connected eventually, like roots to a tree. We didn't get a complete account of the Kabuki dancer, but Bao had siblings whereas Ellin, his counterpart did not have a consistent context and got more build up. The Newholmian pair of gender mismatch received the most attention, and I have to say I loved the name of the sailor girl passing as eunuch, Ornery. Her counterpart, the mystical Consort seemed more believable as boy on the farm, but Mouche's training to please his potential mistress would bend any typical masculinity into something hard to comprehend. The evil Newholmian brothers Bane and Dyre were laughable at many points, even when they were being convincingly evil; I enjoyed Tepper's poke at the mindlessness of cruelty. Bane's acquisition of language from Madame's conversation teacher provides him a very credible cognitive dissonance, similar to Ellin's addiction to reading books. It provides her with a greater range of inquiry that runs counter to her body knowledge as a dancer. I have some moments of cognitive dissonance myself when the gay Bao and lesbian Ornery are classified as mismatched in their gender, but my misgiving faded when they rejoin the group after the transforming pool and the equally transforming dance as the genders they started out. Essentialism is the one sticking point I find in Tepper's writings, but there are always individuals who defy categories, including essentialism. This book is full of mindbending questions, as are many of Tepper's works, and I will probably reread this one in the future, as I also intend to return to her Games trilogy. Well done.
October 14, 2014
(Fantasy 1998) The planet of Newholme has caught the eye of the Great Questioner, a female construct made to make sure that the universal population adhers to the rules of the Council of Worlds. The planetary society is mostly matriarchal, to counteract the usual male-dominated society. It is hard to find what to write without giving away key plots, but it was an interesting look at how our current societies often work, with a fabulous quirk of an alien world and alien concepts. Yes, there are natives there, too. And a catastrophe which must be diverted. All the elements work well. I enjoyed the plot and found myself reading slower as I got near the end, because I didn't want it to end. Great book!
May 11, 2015
Wildly imaginative and dense with the politics of gender and ecology, Tepper creates a weird and wonderful world of deep complexity. She makes pointed commentary on sexism in our society through the twisting of gender roles in this world where men are forced to wear veils lest they excite the female lusts, and some men are trained to be consorts, purchased by women when their husbands have served their use and are put out to pasture as it were. Gender bending is also a norm, with a male geisha dancer, and alien creatures with unknown, or flexible genders. I've seen a fair number of reviews complaining about how Tepper includes so much social justice and politics in her books, but I think that's much of what makes her writing so powerful.
July 3, 2014
There's probably a case to be made that Tepper could get herself a nice career creating fictional worlds for other writers. I've only read three books by her and two of those showcase someone with a more than decent imagination giving her characters rich worlds to romp around in, with some thought given to intricate construction and a nod toward how the various moving parts would actually fit in together. Not all of it adheres to the strict principles of logic ("Beauty" sometimes resorted to the all-purpose get out of jail free clause of "It's magic!") but the true test if any fictional world is worth its salt is whether the reader can immerse themselves in that world and buy into it for however many pages. It may fall apart under closer inspection later, but if you can convince someone in the moment that "this not-real place is totally real!" then for most writers that's half the job right there.
Which is good, because when it comes to the actual plotting sometimes, she seems to let that slide slightly.
Here Tepper gives us the world of Newholme, which is having its second go-round as a settled colony after the first colony (settled by manly men, but we'll get to that later) decided to go pull a Roanoke and vanish entirely. The second attempt seems to have gone much better . . . except for the virus that keeps killing half the girl babies. But the colony winds up functioning quite well, with society stratified in a sort of odd homeostasis, with Hags and Men of Business jointly calling the shots (or the Hags letting them believe they're calling the shots) and pretty, pretty boys that they call Hunks trained as male concubines for when wives want a bit of recreation, or at least someone who knows how to talk about art. Things are going fairly well with all this and then two bad things happen at once: first the planet seems to be slowly shaking itself apart, and the Council of Worlds has decided to send the Questioner on an auditing mission to see how well the colony is following the council laws. The answer: not very well, but they're hoping that with all the cracks opening in the ground she might not notice.
For the most part the story follows the training of Hunk-in-progress Mouche, from his sale to the local House for Hunkifying to his involvement with the Questioner as she arrives to start making everyone really nervous. Along the way we get hints of an indigent population that everyone has pretty much agreed doesn't exist (which is reminding me of another story I read recently that I can't for the life of me remember right at this very second) and hints that the original vanished colony hasn't quite actually vanished, but they aren't actually keen on living in harmony with the land either.
It's all very fascinating and Tepper's method of taking us through this society in both a grand sweep and up-close view is riveting in its own way, especially in seeing how she's worked out all the sociological implications of it. Which is good, because it quickly becomes apparent that the main plot is going to be a slow train coming, especially when it takes almost a third of the book for the Questioner to even arrive. Meanwhile we dally in smaller stories, like a girl passing as a man, the confusions of two dancers recruited to assist the Questioner, Mouche's repeated encounters with two mean boys. It's all very nice and reads well but the narrative thrust seems to be "We'll get there when we get there."
The presence of the Questioner livens things up quite a bit. Possessed of the ability to make a entire colony miserable (i.e. dead) if they tick her off enough, she has a dry sense of humor and a self-assuredness that is a fun contrast to everyone else's obvious nervousness around her, as they smile and insist that nope, nothing is wrong here. Most of the other characters don't make as strong of an impression despite a sometimes intense focus on them and most of them exist more as plot devices than anything else (the dancers are nice but strangely convenient when the time comes, and I'm not even sure what purpose Ornery even serves).
The problems sort of hit when the actual mechanisms of the plot start to kick in and she has to fuse all these elements and themes into the narrative. Anyone reading Tepper for even a short time picks up that writing about gender relations is a focus for her and those issues tend to skew slightly toward "aggressive men screw everything up." And while the colony itself is an example of a mostly functioning woman dominated affair, when she starts to drag in mutated members of the first colony (known charmingly as "Thor") and basically collectively sounding like the cigar-chomping old men in the local lodge talking about how the world would be better if the womenfolk went back to what they were best at, namely making pies and babies (not necessarily in that order), you get the impression that someone has opened the window and let subtlety escape. Coupled with the plot beginning to meander when everyone goes underground (characters disappear for large chunks of the book at a shot) and you're basically reading to see what snarky thing the Questioner will say next. Which is every page she's on, and its great.
Unfortunately as the book drives closer to the end it starts to become more mystical, with gods inside planets and Gaia-type organisms. I feel like Gene Wolfe could have elevated all this to exquisite if baffling metaphor but it starts to come across as near gibberish after a while as everyone starts dancing and jumping in pools . . . by the time she unleashes her climax off-screen and then has one of the characters comment that it's just like in a story and better for not knowing the whole thing in detail, you're not sure if she's being clever or just lacks confidence in her own resolution. It never quite feels as alien as it should and instead of giving the sensation that everyone involved is out of their depth and forced to make it up as they go along, there's a sense of casual inevitability as our heroes are merely guided to their ending. Even the bad men are more or less disposed of so rapidly and without fuss that you wonder why they were even introduced in the first place.
Still, it goes down without too much choking and there's nothing horribly off-putting. For me what stuck the most was how she seemed incapable of society run by women as capable of doing terrible thing in an effort to keep the peace . . . her own revelation about the nature of the virus suggests for a second she's willing to go there but then she pulls back for a more feel-good stance that makes little logical sense in the universe the book inhabits except as a way of more sharply delineating the divide she sees between men and women. Even so, the world she gives us a glimpse into is worth the tour despite the plot at times having all the weight of a very puffy cloud, and I enjoyed the view of the countryside even if the people I met along the way didn't make as much of an impression as she probably would have liked. That said, however, I will give her this: I did not see that last page coming under any circumstances. I don't know if I liked it but in terms of not giving me what I expected, well played, I must say. Well played.
Which is good, because when it comes to the actual plotting sometimes, she seems to let that slide slightly.
Here Tepper gives us the world of Newholme, which is having its second go-round as a settled colony after the first colony (settled by manly men, but we'll get to that later) decided to go pull a Roanoke and vanish entirely. The second attempt seems to have gone much better . . . except for the virus that keeps killing half the girl babies. But the colony winds up functioning quite well, with society stratified in a sort of odd homeostasis, with Hags and Men of Business jointly calling the shots (or the Hags letting them believe they're calling the shots) and pretty, pretty boys that they call Hunks trained as male concubines for when wives want a bit of recreation, or at least someone who knows how to talk about art. Things are going fairly well with all this and then two bad things happen at once: first the planet seems to be slowly shaking itself apart, and the Council of Worlds has decided to send the Questioner on an auditing mission to see how well the colony is following the council laws. The answer: not very well, but they're hoping that with all the cracks opening in the ground she might not notice.
For the most part the story follows the training of Hunk-in-progress Mouche, from his sale to the local House for Hunkifying to his involvement with the Questioner as she arrives to start making everyone really nervous. Along the way we get hints of an indigent population that everyone has pretty much agreed doesn't exist (which is reminding me of another story I read recently that I can't for the life of me remember right at this very second) and hints that the original vanished colony hasn't quite actually vanished, but they aren't actually keen on living in harmony with the land either.
It's all very fascinating and Tepper's method of taking us through this society in both a grand sweep and up-close view is riveting in its own way, especially in seeing how she's worked out all the sociological implications of it. Which is good, because it quickly becomes apparent that the main plot is going to be a slow train coming, especially when it takes almost a third of the book for the Questioner to even arrive. Meanwhile we dally in smaller stories, like a girl passing as a man, the confusions of two dancers recruited to assist the Questioner, Mouche's repeated encounters with two mean boys. It's all very nice and reads well but the narrative thrust seems to be "We'll get there when we get there."
The presence of the Questioner livens things up quite a bit. Possessed of the ability to make a entire colony miserable (i.e. dead) if they tick her off enough, she has a dry sense of humor and a self-assuredness that is a fun contrast to everyone else's obvious nervousness around her, as they smile and insist that nope, nothing is wrong here. Most of the other characters don't make as strong of an impression despite a sometimes intense focus on them and most of them exist more as plot devices than anything else (the dancers are nice but strangely convenient when the time comes, and I'm not even sure what purpose Ornery even serves).
The problems sort of hit when the actual mechanisms of the plot start to kick in and she has to fuse all these elements and themes into the narrative. Anyone reading Tepper for even a short time picks up that writing about gender relations is a focus for her and those issues tend to skew slightly toward "aggressive men screw everything up." And while the colony itself is an example of a mostly functioning woman dominated affair, when she starts to drag in mutated members of the first colony (known charmingly as "Thor") and basically collectively sounding like the cigar-chomping old men in the local lodge talking about how the world would be better if the womenfolk went back to what they were best at, namely making pies and babies (not necessarily in that order), you get the impression that someone has opened the window and let subtlety escape. Coupled with the plot beginning to meander when everyone goes underground (characters disappear for large chunks of the book at a shot) and you're basically reading to see what snarky thing the Questioner will say next. Which is every page she's on, and its great.
Unfortunately as the book drives closer to the end it starts to become more mystical, with gods inside planets and Gaia-type organisms. I feel like Gene Wolfe could have elevated all this to exquisite if baffling metaphor but it starts to come across as near gibberish after a while as everyone starts dancing and jumping in pools . . . by the time she unleashes her climax off-screen and then has one of the characters comment that it's just like in a story and better for not knowing the whole thing in detail, you're not sure if she's being clever or just lacks confidence in her own resolution. It never quite feels as alien as it should and instead of giving the sensation that everyone involved is out of their depth and forced to make it up as they go along, there's a sense of casual inevitability as our heroes are merely guided to their ending. Even the bad men are more or less disposed of so rapidly and without fuss that you wonder why they were even introduced in the first place.
Still, it goes down without too much choking and there's nothing horribly off-putting. For me what stuck the most was how she seemed incapable of society run by women as capable of doing terrible thing in an effort to keep the peace . . . her own revelation about the nature of the virus suggests for a second she's willing to go there but then she pulls back for a more feel-good stance that makes little logical sense in the universe the book inhabits except as a way of more sharply delineating the divide she sees between men and women. Even so, the world she gives us a glimpse into is worth the tour despite the plot at times having all the weight of a very puffy cloud, and I enjoyed the view of the countryside even if the people I met along the way didn't make as much of an impression as she probably would have liked. That said, however, I will give her this: I did not see that last page coming under any circumstances. I don't know if I liked it but in terms of not giving me what I expected, well played, I must say. Well played.
March 16, 2019
As with most of Tepper's books, this one is so complicated and richly-detailed that it makes for good re-reading. I went through 2 major phases of intense Tepper-binging, one at the age of about 15, and another at about the age of 27. Now, in my late 30's, I'm indulging again, revisiting all my old favorites, and Six Moon Dance was the one I started with for the simple fact that it was the only one I couldn't remember anything about. As I read it, some details came back to me, but not many-- overall, it felt as fresh and exciting as reading it for the first time.
Some people are bothered or bored by all the time spent on sexuality and gender, but honestly, I can't get enough of it. There are plenty of authors out there who have no interest in trying to grapple with those topics, and frankly, they're just as Not For Me as Tepper is Not For some readers. I like Tepper because she explores sex and gender in a playful way, and because I mostly get the sense that she's asking questions, not laying down rules.
She's a very risk-taking author, and I feel like if she sometimes stumbles or ends up somewhere ridiculous, I'm totally willing to forgive it for all the times she ends up making me completely believe in the bizarre world she's built.
Some people are bothered or bored by all the time spent on sexuality and gender, but honestly, I can't get enough of it. There are plenty of authors out there who have no interest in trying to grapple with those topics, and frankly, they're just as Not For Me as Tepper is Not For some readers. I like Tepper because she explores sex and gender in a playful way, and because I mostly get the sense that she's asking questions, not laying down rules.
She's a very risk-taking author, and I feel like if she sometimes stumbles or ends up somewhere ridiculous, I'm totally willing to forgive it for all the times she ends up making me completely believe in the bizarre world she's built.
January 17, 2020
I'm a little torn with this book. I liked it quite a bit, even though there are flaws. But I am a big fan of Tepper and her work. I'm not sure a non-Tepper fan would enjoy this. The writing itself is on the experimental side and that can be a bit distracting on occasion. There are characters that didn't work well for me. The chapters with Ashes/Bane/Dyre dragged quite a bit but I muscled through them because I knew they provided information important to the narrative. And, typical of all Tepper books, the sociological constructs she is skewering are pretty obvious. This book is perhaps especially obvious in that respect. If you are not at least somewhat in accordance with Tepper on those issues, I can see this book being infuriating. But I did enjoy it, and I kept coming back to it to find out what happened. And it's making me think. I don't quite agree with everything Tepper presented, but I am thinking about the issues she raised and probably will be for quite some time.
July 30, 2019
Possibly my favorite Tepper book, although I fell in love with her writing with "The Gate to Women's Country." That's a sort of dystopia. This is also a kind of "-topia" book but it's not totally on Earth. And I'm not sure what kind of "topia" is it. Earth seems very sad to me in this book, Newholme is maybe better but would you want to live there?
The characters are all memorable, even the minor ones. A real "baddie" and some pretty amazing imagery. The story of the planet of Newholme and its unusual solution to gender politics is unique.
I knew Ms Tepper personally and she had great imagination and passion for her work and the environment. She said her editors often had "problems" with her feminist viewpoints. Be that as it may, she's been gone a few years and it's sad as we'll have no more of her novels, but I think this is probably her at her best.
The characters are all memorable, even the minor ones. A real "baddie" and some pretty amazing imagery. The story of the planet of Newholme and its unusual solution to gender politics is unique.
I knew Ms Tepper personally and she had great imagination and passion for her work and the environment. She said her editors often had "problems" with her feminist viewpoints. Be that as it may, she's been gone a few years and it's sad as we'll have no more of her novels, but I think this is probably her at her best.
July 9, 2022
What the fuck did I just read? It's a strange, fun, weird book that blends fantasy, science fiction, sociology, and absurdity. If you could somehow merge the minds of Douglas Adams and Ursula Le Guin, you'd end up with something like this. I enjoyed reading it, although I struggled with its inconsistency. At times, the novel takes itself very seriously with its commentary on gender dynamics and the subjugation of women. At other times, it is so weird as to be cheesy (e.g., acronyms that work out to HoLI COW and IDIOT SAVANT). Sometimes the characterization is deeply human, at other times cartoonish. I tend to prefer books that know what they are and do that one thing well, but nonetheless it's charming and I can see why this book is liked well by others.
October 14, 2017
I really wanted to like this book and it started off on a promising note however, it morphed off into too many story lines to follow. Two thirds of the way in, we were introduced to two more new species and the main characters took a backseat to the new development. All of a sudden, the almighty Questioner lost her authority and direction....why? I gave up and didn't finish the book at the point when another weird little subspecies that apparently lived in the shadows all along became the plot directors and were taking the main characters somewhere unknown.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 22, 2018
Another book by one of my favourite authors revisited, it's been many many years since I first read this book so it was almost as if I were visiting it for the first time. As usual I won't be giving a plot summary because others have done so before me. It's a complex book with lots of story lines which Tepper weaves together well. Some of the concepts really do make you stop and think about the way society can pressure both genders to act in a certain way and the way we treat any creature that is different or that we don't understand. I'll be re-visiting more of Sherri Tepper's books soon.
June 29, 2024
I took a while to get into this - too many disparate character threads failed to create a narrative I could cling to - but I persevered and eventually it all came together very successfully. It is, however, a book with two endings and I felt the first ending, the climax (and I use the word advisedly), worked better than the final conclusion. It's more than a three star book, but I'm not sure it has totally earned its four stars. Nevertheless, I am pleased to have read it and enjoyed the vast part of it and its premise.
June 11, 2022
This is one of the weirdest books I’ve ever read. There are shape-changing aliens, a magic pool, a judgemental cyborg with three brains, and a giant subterranean being that will destroy the planet if it doesn’t get some lovin’.
The plot is rambling and disjointed, seemingly trying to tell several stories at once, and is very heavy on the sexual politics. I’ve enjoyed several of this author’s books, but this one was too implausible and just plain odd for me.
The plot is rambling and disjointed, seemingly trying to tell several stories at once, and is very heavy on the sexual politics. I’ve enjoyed several of this author’s books, but this one was too implausible and just plain odd for me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 2, 2024
Worst case of "tell don't show" i've read in many years. Terribly bad.
After several boring and consecutive lectures, some ridiculously disguised as dialogues between characters explaining the world they have lived their entire lives, some actually 3rd person auctorial lectures not disguised at all... i gave up, feeling like 3rd grade.
Too bad for the probably good worldbuilduing (not so much for the fantasy, even YA, characters).
After several boring and consecutive lectures, some ridiculously disguised as dialogues between characters explaining the world they have lived their entire lives, some actually 3rd person auctorial lectures not disguised at all... i gave up, feeling like 3rd grade.
Too bad for the probably good worldbuilduing (not so much for the fantasy, even YA, characters).
January 16, 2018
I'm not always a fan of Sheri Tepper's sometimes heavy-handed fiction, but I must admit that she never fails to make me go "awhaaaaaaaat?"
Reading it while feverish and sick is also a wild experience.
Reading it while feverish and sick is also a wild experience.
July 5, 2019
While this was a slow read for me, it was totally awesome. I love Sheri Tepper's books (or the 3 that I have read). This is definitely the book I needed to read at this time in my life. There is so much wisdom in this story set on another planet.
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October 6, 2020Tepper is a master of alien ecology and giving out information at an intriguing drip. That said, I wouldn't be keen to read this one again. The tone is ... would "New Age tragicomedic body horror" mean anything?
February 4, 2024
I read this right after seeing the Barbie movie. What a pairing!!! Tepper always has an interesting spin on gender roles in her novels, and this is one of her more interesting takes on the subject. And ecology -- the society she posits is poised on ruining its planet, too.
August 24, 2017
An intriguing bit of worldbuilding, interweaving her familiar feminist and environmentalist themes with a nifty exploration of artificial intelligence.
February 20, 2018
right in line with many of Tepper's themes; an upside-down look at civilization. This was entertaining, but I didn't find it as profound as some of Tepper's other works.
June 10, 2018
This is a very unusual book; well-executed, complex, and imaginative. BUT... I just didn't find myself engaged in or drawn to the text.
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