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Sep. 14th, 2011 10:56 amA few months ago I went to stay chez ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
varadia, and we got into a long discussion about Sheri S. Tepper, as you do. When I left, she pressed a Tepper book into my hands and announced, "It's the one with CEPHALOPOD MERBABIES."
So I read The Waters Rising!
The weird thing about The Waters Rising is not actually the cephalopod merbabies. . . . All right, it is the cephalopod merbabies, because those arrive at the end and are incredibly weird. But the weirdest thing is how for half a book it actually seems . . . totally postapocalyptic-world-turned-fantasy-world normal? There is a helpful hero with a sarcastic talking horse, and a ten-year-old ingenue of mysterious parentage who gets sent with some faithful and mysterious companions on an equally mysterious quest to reach AU Post-Apocalyptic China, and some villains engaged in political plotting to take over the kingdom by marriage, and it all feels . . . weirdly not-bizarre! Like, anybody could have written this book!
And then you get about three-quarters of the way through and you realize, NO, IT WAS BIZARRE ALL ALONG AND YOU JUST DIDN'T NOTICE.
Things that are sort of set up early but don't play out until after ( the middle of the book are spoilers, I guess )
varadia, and we got into a long discussion about Sheri S. Tepper, as you do. When I left, she pressed a Tepper book into my hands and announced, "It's the one with CEPHALOPOD MERBABIES."So I read The Waters Rising!
The weird thing about The Waters Rising is not actually the cephalopod merbabies. . . . All right, it is the cephalopod merbabies, because those arrive at the end and are incredibly weird. But the weirdest thing is how for half a book it actually seems . . . totally postapocalyptic-world-turned-fantasy-world normal? There is a helpful hero with a sarcastic talking horse, and a ten-year-old ingenue of mysterious parentage who gets sent with some faithful and mysterious companions on an equally mysterious quest to reach AU Post-Apocalyptic China, and some villains engaged in political plotting to take over the kingdom by marriage, and it all feels . . . weirdly not-bizarre! Like, anybody could have written this book!
And then you get about three-quarters of the way through and you realize, NO, IT WAS BIZARRE ALL ALONG AND YOU JUST DIDN'T NOTICE.
Things that are sort of set up early but don't play out until after ( the middle of the book are spoilers, I guess )
