Singer from the Sea (a book review post)

 

Usually, when I finish a book, I write the review right away. That's how I always do it, really... until this book. This book...
This book was so bad I didn't know what to say.
I still don't, really.
And it makes me sad because Tepper has some really great books (The Gate to Women's Country for one). But I have been mentioning as I've gone along reading her books that they were less and less good.

The real issue is that her books are mostly all the same. They are all made of the same ingredients. And there are a lot of things you can do with, say, potatoes but, after awhile, you're tired of potatoes, no matter how they're prepared. This book is no different and has all of the usual ingredients:
1. Female protagonist
2. with some sort of secret mental ability
3. that she has no knowledge of before the story starts.
4. The fate of the world is in the hands of the protagonist.
5. There either has been or about to be some sort of global catastrophe.
6. Aliens are involved in some way and often have some sort of connection the "spirit of the world"

7. which is somehow connected to the protagonist.

8. There is some mystery to be solved, usually dealing with why and how the protagonist has these special powers.

optional ingredient: There is a prophecy involved.

Thinking about all of that, now, as I wrote it down, The Gate to Women's Country is the only book of hers that I have read that doesn't have all of this stuff in it. Some of it but not all.

To make matters worse with Singer, it's like Tepper couldn't decide what story she actually wanted to tell. There is one story being told at the beginning of the novel, and I was enjoying that one well enough, though I hadn't really been "grabbed" by it, but about 1/3 of the way in, the story completely changes. Abruptly. The protagonist is told almost out of the blue "you need to run for your life," and she takes off and the whole tone and structure of the story changes. It was like the main character stepped into a different book. And it happened again later, when there is an alien invasion. It's not that this kind of thing doesn't happen in books sometimes but, when it does, the author usually has some kind of reason and ties it back in later. I think Tepper tried to tie it all together at the end, but it really felt forced and like she started one story, realized she wanted to tell a different story, and just switched mid-book, leaving the opening story attached.

The mystery in this book is solved less by the characters trying to solve than by them stumbling upon things randomly and/or accidentally, accompanied by huge leaps of logic that the character had no legitimate reason to make. But, then, Tepper acted in this book as if when one character discovered something, then all of the characters magically knew that piece of information. Authors do this sometimes, but it's lazy storytelling. "I don't feel like getting this piece of information from character A to character B, so everyone will just know everything."

Oh, and at the end of the book, the protagonist suddenly has gills and can breathe under water. That's when I really wanted to throw the book across the room. Seriously, what the fuck? She already has special powers and, now, you're going to just toss in gills because it's convenient to what you want to do in the story? ugh

I could never in good conscious suggest that anyone should read this book. I've read a lot of bad books in my time, and this is right down there with the worst of them. Go get yourself a copy of The Gate to Women's Country and read that -- it really is a great book -- but don't go farther than that with Tepper, no matter how much you're tempted. It's all downhill from there.