Sheri S. Tepper - Grass

Okay, this book was so disappointing. I actually bought it because the first couple of chapters seemed interesting. It starts with a description of a prairie planet covered in multi-coloured grass ("Grass!") and there's a shocking scene of Grass's arisocrats on a foxhunt that culminated in a collective orgasm. Wut?

But interspecies sex isn't the focus of the book. The story follows Marjorie Westriding Yrarier and her family, who are sent to Grass to investigate a rumoured cure for the plague that's killing the human race on all other planets. They unravel mysteries around Grassian aristocracy, its weird animals, and a political intrigue taking place between religious sects. 

I mean that all sounds really good, actually, but in execution it was boring. I didn't like all the praying to God, confessing sins, debating morality - nor did I enjoy the ecological secrets of Grass, which turned out to be very silly.

There were many bits and pieces I liked that I wished Tepper had expanded on. The migerers. The sections written from the horses' POV. Sylvan's obsession with his little sister Dimity, which I thought for a moment was incestuous. The brainwiped girls. Rilibee Chime and his poor dead family. Life in Commontown on Grass. Even more sex scenes with the Lovecraftian and vague foxen would have been welcome.

Instead we got scads of unlikeable and uninteresting characters, like Marjorie's entire family, various members of different religious groups, and the Hippae/foxen. 

And then there's the prose. I don't mind low-brow pulp, but I found Tepper's writing unforgivable at times. For example:

She found herself trying to think of an excuse why she shouldn't go herself. She wanted to go herself. [...] Damn. She felt unutterably sad but forbade herself to cry.

About 80% of the above could have been cut out. It made me really appreciate Ursula K Le Guin's linguistic economy.