This is an exciting and interesting novel. Other critics have pointed out its similarity to Herbert’s Dune. As far as details of the setting and the cast of characters the parallels are there, but can be ignored. The book is not a copy. The underlying philosophical themes are different. But, the head hopping point of view of the omniscient narrator was the flaw, in my opinion. With the numerous supporting characters and the fast moving plot, the head hopping was confusing at times. ( )

Reminded me very much of Speaker for the Dead. I couldn't put it down. Horror and wonder in equal parts--truly alien species and Big Questions. The more I think about it the more I like it.

Seriously, though, SO MANY characters are in love with the MC. ( )

NYPL, First time, Paper, Book Club

In the middle this felt like it was going nowhere and too many directions at once. Perhaps too ambitious but thankfully the last half came together to a satisfying conclusion. Could have been two books with half as many themes each. ( )

Sheri S. Tepper is very much a second wave ecofeminist speculative fiction author. Her books explore themes of patriarchy, religion, misogyny, ecological destruction, the paradox of tolerance, and how do societies deal with bad actors, as individuals or as a class or as a whole society (to keep going up levels of analysis)--in other words questions of morality and ethics. She tends to rely rather too much on deus ex machina for my taste in the form of some sort of benevolent ultimate power, whether that's in the form of aliens with superior technology (Fresco) or a sentient planet (True Game) in the best animist sense of early modern ecological theories a la Clements or colonization by a fungal network that bestows collective empathy (Raising the Stones). I can sympathize with that kind of liberal fantasy about how to cure what ails mankind (and it is very much *man*kind in Tepper's stories) even as I dislike some of her presentations of how that would work.

I had heard great things about the Arbai trilogy and finally managed to round up copies of Grass, Raising the Stones, and Sideshow. And now I've read them as part of my ongoing category challenge to eliminate my fiction TBR piles. I liked them, wanted to like them, and didn't like them to varying degrees. Tepper does know how to write a plot and create a sense of suspense that keep the story moving forward, making it hard to put the book down. I appreciate the worldbuilding, the interesting and memorable characters, and the grappling with big ideas. I raced through all three books in a week.

As mentioned above, I don’t care for benevolent higher power as always the solution to social ills. I don't like the harmful stereotypes she perpetuated as part of her axe grinding and the relative lack of nuance in her characters, as interesting as many of them are. I don't like the female protagonist heading into Mary Sue territory. I do tend to agree with the criticisms about her heavy-handedness/lack of subtlety and generally preachy tone, plus some skeeviness in some of the relationships she sets up between older men and younger women/girls or the unconsciously irresistible female protagonist. People have read genocide apologism in her works—she certainly explores that issue, along with whiffs of eugenics, but I can’t decisively declare that she is pro-genocide, though she is most definitely for euthanizing/removing problematic, harmful people who are incapable of learning/transforming. She doesn’t even frame it as justice as such, more as putting them out of their misery (along with protecting the vulnerable/society as a whole). Disability activists quite reasonably give the side-eye to such arguments because all too often they are the first and most heavily impacted by such “cleansing” reforms.

Grass was engrossing, with a mystery to propel the story forward—what is causing the plague that is slowly wiping out humanity across the galaxy? And what secrets are at the center of the annual hunts of the aristocracy on the mostly isolated and unknown planet of Grass, where the humans in remote and scattered estates engage in annual foxen hunts, riding Hippae and following hounds. What is the connection among these three native species? Who’s really in charge, and what does all this mean? And how does it connect to the all of the people dying elsewhere?

The story opens with a glorious description of the planet’s landscape and then segues into Diamantine bon Damfels going on her first hunt, establishing the atmosphere of suspense and dread. It then moves to overcrowded Terra and the protagonist, Lady Marjorie Westriding Yrarier, an Old Catholic aristocrat who won an Olympic gold medal in horse events (still a thing in the distant future!). Her husband, Rodrigo Yrarier, agrees to travel to Grass as Ambassador at the behest of his uncle, the Hierarch of Sanctity, the interstellar evangelical theocracy that dominates human space, with the secret mission to discover whether the rumors of a cure and/or immunity on Grass are true. Thus the Yrarier household arrives on Grass—Marjorie and Rigo, their teenage kids, their 2 household priests, Rigo’s mistress, and a half dozen horses—and events spiral out of control from there. The narrative shifts among a multitude characters (including the horses) in multiple locations who eventually come together as the plot thickens and races along like a spring flood in a river gorge.

I liked the worldbuilding, evocative scenery, interesting alien biology (I figured out part but not all of it), likable characters, action, and general imagination involved. And yet. The story just didn’t hang together for me, particularly in terms of the science and putative mechanisms, but also in terms of the character dynamics and key plot points. From here on spoilers!

Most of the plants are thousands of varieties of grass, from fine, moss-like groundcover, to giant bamboo-like stands with few trails through their vastness. Wet areas are the only places with trees—in essence swamp forests. The famous grass gardens of the aristocratic estates supposedly were designed as firebreaks for apparently rare grassfires. No understanding of fire ecology in this story—continuous vegetation, especially grass, is not actually a firebreak. No mention of major water bodies like rivers or lakes, which could act as natural firebreaks and more importantly, sources of water for fire suppression. Apparently there’s no lightning on the planet? Otherwise, grassfires would be happening all the time, and there’d be huge swathes of land showing signs of past fires. Which begs the question of what starts the fires, and how the hell they’re stopped, and how do all the critters avoid getting killed because a grassfire with a good wind can move fast! (Of course, this becomes a key plot point too.)

Then there’s the native animals: central to the story are the hounds (the size of horses), Hippae (twice as large, so maybe the size of draft horses? small elephants?), and foxen (bigger still—massive—far bigger than any apex predator on Earth). Also important are peepers and migerers, and passing mention of giant grazers and finally smallest of all the described lifeforms are the bats (vampire, of course, maybe the size of soccer balls). All of these (except the bats and maybe the digging migerers) are quite large organisms. No mention of birds, or rodents, or herpetiles or large predators, (except the foxen and a now extinct even larger predator), or carrion eaters, or any of the myriad other functional roles of a food web. The foxen apparently eat peepers and not much else. What do the hounds and Hippae eat? What about the peepers themselves? Does anything eat the giant grazers? How do all these large organisms sustain their mass and their planet-wide populations?

The human dynamics on the planet don’t quite hold up either. Each aristocratic estate has its own servant-class village. Plus, the only urban area on the planet is around the spaceport, located in an open area surrounded by impenetrable swamp forest, keeping outside influences contained and planetary secrets intact. Turns out, a lot of the villagers spend the winter in the city. And all of them are far more educated and economically better off than the nobility. They essentially humor the aristocrats and their delusions of superiority. O rly? That’s how that works? And the aristocrats never abuse their servants such that they walk out and leave them to their isolated estates? No real class tensions at all?

Moreover, when the diplomatic party from Terra arrives, the non-aristocratic locals just open right up and help them along at first ask? No need for trust-building? Marjorie just inspires that kind of reaction with everyone? Despite her husband being a giant dick? Despite the clearly dysfunctional family dynamics?

Then there’s the whole plague thing. Not surprisingly, Grass is both the source and the solution to this pandemic that is slowly wiping out humanity. Supposedly, a virus on the planet converts the amino acid L-alanine to D-alanine, and the latter cannot be metabolized by human bodies, leading to slow decomposition and death as the virus churns out more and more D-alanine in an L-alanine universe. And Grass is the only place in the universe with D-alanine in equilibrium with L-alanine, so the virus also converts D-alanine to L-alanine in equal measure and thus people there don’t get sick. Like, that’s not how chirality and stereochemistry and metabolism work. And even if it were, it wouldn’t lead to the symptoms so vividly described in the book, any more than hemoglobin in blood binding carbon monoxide preferentially to oxygen, which certainly can lead to death, but not decomposition. So living on Grass means that the virus does not reproduce destructively in the human population, but surely, when such people leave the planet, they would become just as susceptible? How could they have generalized immunity when the putative mechanism is so location specific?

And then there’s the delivery system. The Hippae apparently would ride off with young women during the hunt every now and then, mindwipe them, and then implant an impulse to go to the spaceport and stow away with dead bats (the disease vector) in hand. Or maybe just lob them into the open hatches. This plague has been going on for many, many years, but the first time one of these naked brainless girls is discovered is after the Terran diplomats arrive? And apparently epidemiology is not a thing? Like, wouldn’t the ship crews get sick first? Wouldn’t it be easy to connect the spread with ship routes? I know that the premise is the complete suppression of information surrounding the plague by the Sanctity government, but human gossip is a thing, and ship crews, I would expect would compare notes.

And none of this even touches on the themes and issues and narrative of the story, the things that Tepper has to say about organized religion, authoritarianism, patriarchy, intimacy, etc. But this review is already quite long just discussing the first book and my inability to suspend disbelief. So I wanted to like this book, and I did appreciate many aspects of it, but in the end, I think it’s not a keeper. ( )