The Margarets

This is the most recent of Sheri Tepper's fantasy-cum-scifi books. I just finished reading it and, as usual, loved her inventive worlds and how very real most of the characters feel. But, as usual, I also think that she really needs a bigger bully for an editor. She gets away with bits that should have been cut out, such as little mini-sermons for those readers who are not smart enough to "get it" and the too concrete links to current U.S. politics. For instance, No Child Left Behind is mentioned in this book, which makes no sense at all, given that the events are supposed to take place hundreds of years into the future, and nobody then would remember any rinky-dinky educational policies of this decade.

Tepper is quite a lot like that little girl of the ditty who "when she is good she is very, very good, and when she is bad she is horrid." Which really is a pity, because some of her books are based on fascinating ideas and arguments about the human race, what makes it tick and how it might look in quite a different environment.

Still, she is one of the authors I go to when the world has decided to sit on the feminist me.