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Ettison #1
Blood Heritage
Badger Ettison does not believe in demons. Until a shrieking, freezing horror escapes its ancient prison. Badger Ettison does not believe in magic. But the old blood-rituals are the only way to stop the voracious evil that pursues his wife and son. Badger Ettison does not believe in terror. Now he is living it.
284 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1986
3 people are currently reading
293 people want to read
About the author
Sheri S. Tepper
74 books1,084 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 - 13 of 13 reviews
August 16, 2019
I found this novel, the first of Tepper's I've come across that I would classify as horror or dark fantasy, a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, I liked the focus on female characters, especially Molly the farmer's wife who turns out to be a lot more, and also the eccentric Professor with his dogs named after famous Buddhist scholars. Mahlia, the female lead, a pyschic who is half Polynesian and half French, is a bit weak, mooning about the male lead, Badger Ettison, who is rather a chauvinist. The fact that his wife Carolyn and son Robby are supposedly dead should make him more sympathetic, but most of the time I found him annoying.
There are some interesting twists though I did rather anticipate the one where turned out to be responsible for the present troubles. In essence, a field has been dedicated to a labyrinth or maze for generations, with gates that have to be kept locked: a contrivance which is a prison for a very dangerous entity.
Badger's mother-in-law, wife and son are implicated, and the quest by Badger, Mahlia, the Prof and Molly to find out if Carolyn and Robby are still alive, and to combat the danger threatening all of them, leads them to an old friend of Carolyn's with links to the first location. Michael Shiel leads a strange colony up in the mountains with an odd temple and very disturbing 'religious' practices based upon - trigger warning - . That whole section left a lot unexplained, such as how would apparently ancient images of a Hindu style deity or demon be engraved within caverns in the Colorado area of the USA?
On the whole the book balanced out at a 3 star rating for me; it had enough likeable characters and elements, but also sufficiently annoying ones such as Badger to end up as a middle of the road read.
There are some interesting twists though I did rather anticipate the one where turned out to be responsible for the present troubles. In essence, a field has been dedicated to a labyrinth or maze for generations, with gates that have to be kept locked: a contrivance which is a prison for a very dangerous entity.
Badger's mother-in-law, wife and son are implicated, and the quest by Badger, Mahlia, the Prof and Molly to find out if Carolyn and Robby are still alive, and to combat the danger threatening all of them, leads them to an old friend of Carolyn's with links to the first location. Michael Shiel leads a strange colony up in the mountains with an odd temple and very disturbing 'religious' practices based upon - trigger warning - . That whole section left a lot unexplained, such as how would apparently ancient images of a Hindu style deity or demon be engraved within caverns in the Colorado area of the USA?
On the whole the book balanced out at a 3 star rating for me; it had enough likeable characters and elements, but also sufficiently annoying ones such as Badger to end up as a middle of the road read.
October 24, 2019
I started reading Sheri S Tepper's books 20+ years ago and have become a big fans. My favourites are The True Game set of books and there follow on's.
I found "Blood Heritage" (and its sequel, "The Bones") a really good departure from here normal style of writing, they are great "horror" stories.
Set in the world as we know it. Its a tale of (fairly) normal people caught up in strange events that involve witches, demons and succubi.
Nuff said. Read it yourself if you want to know more!
I found "Blood Heritage" (and its sequel, "The Bones") a really good departure from here normal style of writing, they are great "horror" stories.
Set in the world as we know it. Its a tale of (fairly) normal people caught up in strange events that involve witches, demons and succubi.
Nuff said. Read it yourself if you want to know more!
September 10, 2022
Tepper is a great writer overall. However, I found this book a bit too "tropey" for my liking. It played out like a B horror movie from the 70s/80s in my head. Like how oddly convenient that Badger happened to just magically be around so many people who know so much about demonology and the occult to help him find his missing family members. Like is everyone in his apartment building an archeologist or a pagan? Ha! The idea of Carolyn escaping to a cultist's cave in the woods was neat (reminds me of a lot of Netflix horror movies), but I felt like the world-building of this environment could have been done better to make the reader feel like they were there. Also, the classic "we are going to pull a trick on you" and then the people being tricked retaliate by pranking the others back in the same exact way was a lame way to bring out Carolyn's demise and put the demon forces to rest. Not the worst paperback from Hell I have read, definitely not the best. I doubt I will bother reading the sequel, but I will likely collect in anyways....you bibliophiles know how it goes.
June 28, 2014
I'm not a horror reader but this is one of my fave books of all time. I've read it too many times to count. I just love the characters, especially the strong women and the three dogs, Ting, Ching and Bing!
August 21, 2016
Reread many times. Sheri Tepper books are always fun.
August 11, 2010
This is inspiring me to check out Tepper again.
March 31, 2011
horror but good
July 14, 2021
An interesting melding of supernatural/mythical concepts that only really misses the mark in it's fleshless backstory.
June 28, 2025
Longest book I’ve ever (willingly) read, and one of the weakest. I should’ve DNFd this crap, but I got too deep before I could; besides, I was hoping it could crawl out of the deep ass hole it dug itself in, or to break the laws of a two-dimensional plane as a flea. Instead it turned into whatever shit show the back half of this book devolved into. Since this a longer, more well-crafted story (though I wouldn’t agree on the latter), I will review this a bit more organized.
Positives:
• Mahlia and the Professor
Mahlia’s psychic tendencies and solid character writing make for one of the few likable and notable characters here. The professor, also equipped with great lines, is the humor of this book and it lands strikingly well even if this book already feels like one big joke.
• First Half
Whilst slow, it was the half of which I couldn’t find much problems with. It was intriguing enough and it was cool to see the farm plot intercept with Badger’s plot. Sure, it led to a dreadful continuation of the plot, but it in itself is good. Also, the better death scenes occurred there—getting to those now.
• Matsuka’s Killings Within the First Half
The whole first part of the book is building the demon advertised on the cover and in the blurb, and when he finally enters the story, he kills one of the main assholes—Annie I think her name was?—in a shocking fashion. And then does it again, to an even bigger asshole. This was exciting, but again, led to poopoo.
• Final Chapter
It wraps everything up inoffensively and is a relatively happy ending. Noice.
Downsides:
• Characters
None of them, even my favorites, have any true emotional stakes. We know little about them and aren’t given much of a reason to care outside of finding Badger’s son. There’s simply not much about them that makes you care about their journey, especially in the back half. Let alone, none of of the main group of six (the trio and the witches) actually fucking die, so I can’t even tell if I’d truly care or not; the only thing that does make me care is a literal fact of society: Mahlia is about to get raped in one scene (and killed but I can’t care there) and that’s just a general rule-of-thumb that it’s bad, and she and her visions further inflate that concept. It’s depressing how little cared for these characters overall.
• Bad Instances of Writing
Sometimes, it’s hard to really grasp what’s happening, who is speaking, and what I’m supposed to be depicting. This is evident in the later action scenes particularly, and whilst I already dislike action books (it bores me dearly) I’ve seen action bits in kids horror that made more sense, probably because they were trying to describe everything in some fantastical, epic, yet cryptic manner that seemed to be happening in whatever the the fuck the fight scene was between Matsuka and sexy demon lady.
• THE FUCKING TONE
BY GOLLY. The tone completely changes halfway through and the book absolutely fucking obliterates about everything it was trying to do by introducing (bare with me): cave slug/human flesh monsters, a goddess who seduces all genders to suck their bones out of their flesh, a rapist-pedophile cult that hunts little girls ritually as a game for pleasure and thrill, FUCKING WITCHES, time travel spells, and… oh, did I mention Badger turns into a retard?
• Blatant Idiocracy in the Back-Half
From asking people how to get to the pedophile cult place when told not to when Matsuka can read minds and is evidently not stupid to thinking his wife ISN’T a heartless foul monster who was clearly never in love with him, Badger turns a little stupid. I can’t suspend my belief much further that after he went through that he can’t simply accept fully that she’s evil and makes the stupidest fucking mistake ever by “leaving a trail” after the witches told him not to, let alone merely a few pages such remark. I blame the author probably forgetting the own plot there. And, not only that, but MATSUKA—a demon who is intelligent and merely tricked once into time traveling into the past for extra time on the character’s parts—IS APPARENTLY STUPID ENOUGH TO GO BACK INTO HIS OWN BOTTLE, AND NOT BE ABLE TO NAVIGATE WITHOUT A TRAIL, SINCE HE IS APPARENTLY BLIND. NOPE. NADDA. This is just bad writing in its most raw state, ladies, gents, and all of those in between, and Elon Musk’s X-dick shaped cult, whatever gender they are. Oh, and I just remembered—they pull a Fear Street in the climax, where the demon hunts by the scent of blood, like a shark as one of his nicknames implies. So they use Badger’s son’s blood in the bottle to get him into it—except it’s not a lot, and they hurting his son getting too much. Pro tip: JUST MIX THE BLOOD WITH WATER. THAT’S HOW SHARKS HUNT, RIGHT? Doing so would risk-free greatly improved their blood supply with only a good few drops into a bucket. It would take longer for Matsuka to drink it up, and would allow them a less risky way to make the trail. It’s just blatant stupidity there; I hope they’ve seen the Fear Street films now.
Overall, 3/10. Don’t read this.
Positives:
• Mahlia and the Professor
Mahlia’s psychic tendencies and solid character writing make for one of the few likable and notable characters here. The professor, also equipped with great lines, is the humor of this book and it lands strikingly well even if this book already feels like one big joke.
• First Half
Whilst slow, it was the half of which I couldn’t find much problems with. It was intriguing enough and it was cool to see the farm plot intercept with Badger’s plot. Sure, it led to a dreadful continuation of the plot, but it in itself is good. Also, the better death scenes occurred there—getting to those now.
• Matsuka’s Killings Within the First Half
The whole first part of the book is building the demon advertised on the cover and in the blurb, and when he finally enters the story, he kills one of the main assholes—Annie I think her name was?—in a shocking fashion. And then does it again, to an even bigger asshole. This was exciting, but again, led to poopoo.
• Final Chapter
It wraps everything up inoffensively and is a relatively happy ending. Noice.
Downsides:
• Characters
None of them, even my favorites, have any true emotional stakes. We know little about them and aren’t given much of a reason to care outside of finding Badger’s son. There’s simply not much about them that makes you care about their journey, especially in the back half. Let alone, none of of the main group of six (the trio and the witches) actually fucking die, so I can’t even tell if I’d truly care or not; the only thing that does make me care is a literal fact of society: Mahlia is about to get raped in one scene (and killed but I can’t care there) and that’s just a general rule-of-thumb that it’s bad, and she and her visions further inflate that concept. It’s depressing how little cared for these characters overall.
• Bad Instances of Writing
Sometimes, it’s hard to really grasp what’s happening, who is speaking, and what I’m supposed to be depicting. This is evident in the later action scenes particularly, and whilst I already dislike action books (it bores me dearly) I’ve seen action bits in kids horror that made more sense, probably because they were trying to describe everything in some fantastical, epic, yet cryptic manner that seemed to be happening in whatever the the fuck the fight scene was between Matsuka and sexy demon lady.
• THE FUCKING TONE
BY GOLLY. The tone completely changes halfway through and the book absolutely fucking obliterates about everything it was trying to do by introducing (bare with me): cave slug/human flesh monsters, a goddess who seduces all genders to suck their bones out of their flesh, a rapist-pedophile cult that hunts little girls ritually as a game for pleasure and thrill, FUCKING WITCHES, time travel spells, and… oh, did I mention Badger turns into a retard?
• Blatant Idiocracy in the Back-Half
From asking people how to get to the pedophile cult place when told not to when Matsuka can read minds and is evidently not stupid to thinking his wife ISN’T a heartless foul monster who was clearly never in love with him, Badger turns a little stupid. I can’t suspend my belief much further that after he went through that he can’t simply accept fully that she’s evil and makes the stupidest fucking mistake ever by “leaving a trail” after the witches told him not to, let alone merely a few pages such remark. I blame the author probably forgetting the own plot there. And, not only that, but MATSUKA—a demon who is intelligent and merely tricked once into time traveling into the past for extra time on the character’s parts—IS APPARENTLY STUPID ENOUGH TO GO BACK INTO HIS OWN BOTTLE, AND NOT BE ABLE TO NAVIGATE WITHOUT A TRAIL, SINCE HE IS APPARENTLY BLIND. NOPE. NADDA. This is just bad writing in its most raw state, ladies, gents, and all of those in between, and Elon Musk’s X-dick shaped cult, whatever gender they are. Oh, and I just remembered—they pull a Fear Street in the climax, where the demon hunts by the scent of blood, like a shark as one of his nicknames implies. So they use Badger’s son’s blood in the bottle to get him into it—except it’s not a lot, and they hurting his son getting too much. Pro tip: JUST MIX THE BLOOD WITH WATER. THAT’S HOW SHARKS HUNT, RIGHT? Doing so would risk-free greatly improved their blood supply with only a good few drops into a bucket. It would take longer for Matsuka to drink it up, and would allow them a less risky way to make the trail. It’s just blatant stupidity there; I hope they’ve seen the Fear Street films now.
Overall, 3/10. Don’t read this.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 3, 2024
NOTA: No leer la sinopsis que pusieron para este libro. Una vez más tiene spoilers.
Badger Ettison está al borde del abismo: hace un año su mujer y su hijo desaparecieron en un accidente en el que no se pudieron recuperar sus cadáveres. Vive simplemente porque su cuerpo sigue respirando, comiendo, yendo a trabajar, y en las últimas semanas las pesadillas en las que su hijo le pide que lo encuentre no lo dejan conciliar el sueño. Luego en una fiesta de la universidad en que trabaja, a la que su preocupada hermana lo obliga a asistir, conoce a la bella y vibrante Mahlia Waiwela, quien lo primero que hace es decirle que su hijo lo necesita y es necesario encontrarlo.
Este es el primer libro de la "duología" de terror de "Ettison", y en mi opinión es el mejor de los dos. En él conocemos a Badger Ettison, profesor universitario cuya joven y hermosa esposa muere en un accidente con su pequeño hijo; y a Mahlia Waiwela, estudiante de posgrado de esa misma universidad y aprendiz de bruja. De aquí en adelante el libro se vuelve una mezcla de misterio detectivesco, terror y acción contra reloj muy divertida y muy bien llevada. Siendo una novela de Sheri S. Tepper, Mahlia es quien lleva la voz cantante y la verdadera protagonista, mientras Badger se comporta la mayor parte del tiempo como un lastre que no puede comprender lo que está ocurriendo.
Acción bien llevada y terror matizado con aventura. Recomiendo mucho esta novela; es una lástima que de los dos libros, este es el único que las editoriales decidieron no traducir al español.
Badger Ettison está al borde del abismo: hace un año su mujer y su hijo desaparecieron en un accidente en el que no se pudieron recuperar sus cadáveres. Vive simplemente porque su cuerpo sigue respirando, comiendo, yendo a trabajar, y en las últimas semanas las pesadillas en las que su hijo le pide que lo encuentre no lo dejan conciliar el sueño. Luego en una fiesta de la universidad en que trabaja, a la que su preocupada hermana lo obliga a asistir, conoce a la bella y vibrante Mahlia Waiwela, quien lo primero que hace es decirle que su hijo lo necesita y es necesario encontrarlo.
Este es el primer libro de la "duología" de terror de "Ettison", y en mi opinión es el mejor de los dos. En él conocemos a Badger Ettison, profesor universitario cuya joven y hermosa esposa muere en un accidente con su pequeño hijo; y a Mahlia Waiwela, estudiante de posgrado de esa misma universidad y aprendiz de bruja. De aquí en adelante el libro se vuelve una mezcla de misterio detectivesco, terror y acción contra reloj muy divertida y muy bien llevada. Siendo una novela de Sheri S. Tepper, Mahlia es quien lleva la voz cantante y la verdadera protagonista, mientras Badger se comporta la mayor parte del tiempo como un lastre que no puede comprender lo que está ocurriendo.
Acción bien llevada y terror matizado con aventura. Recomiendo mucho esta novela; es una lástima que de los dos libros, este es el único que las editoriales decidieron no traducir al español.
November 17, 2024
Unfortunately, this was not good. There were some good aspects - the mystery and spookiness of the cult, the way the specialities of Badger, the professor and even the dogs came in handy rather than being just background characteristics - but overall the story was poorly structured and shallow. I think it could have been better with more world building and by being longer, but at the 240 page length it was never able to get its feet under itself.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Want to read
January 29, 2010Library
February 28, 2011
I have liked all her other books but this one was pretty silly
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews