The Awakeners: Northshore & Southshore

This book is so strange and so detailed, it is easy to forget the real world. In fact, this book gave me nightmares for a week. I just described the plot to a friend of mine, and it gave her nightmares too! A great read, but very creepy and surreal. The lack of explanation for the ending is a little frustrating but should not deter you. I would love to read some of Tepper's other work, but frankly I am a bit afraid after the intensity of this one.

I've been a great fan of Sheri S. Tepper's for years, but somehow I missed this book, perhaps because it was published before I started her books. I'm glad I finally found it! Ms. Tepper is one of the few authors whose work seems to be detiorating with time; the quality of her books have been going downhill since "Gibbon's Decline and Fall". But this is vintage Tepper: a great plot, compelling and interesting characters and even a message about the nature of humans. Don't miss this one!

As usual Tepper brings to life a complex and extremely realistic world. Her heroic characters are multi-dimensional and evolve during the course of the story. The plot twists and turns as the host of main characters (there have to be at least ten) each add to the story from their own point of view. Somehow Tepper manages to keep all the action coherent and moving in a forward direction but the reader has to really pay attention! This is not a book that you can put down and pick up two weeks later unless you have a phenomenal memory. The only weak element is in the creation of the villians. They are almost one-dimensional and are reminiscent of the flat villians of Tepper's Six Moon Dance. Villians aside though, this is a typically wonderful Tepper book. You'll feel sad when its over.

This is one of my favorite books because it is told so realistically, yet maintains the beauty, the "richer than life" detail that one idealizes in a fantasy novel. The characterization is fantastic, with depth and dimension so often forgotten in this genre. One understands and becomes so involved with the characters that it is difficult to exist normally in life, until its completion. This novel is strangely underrated. I would reccomend it to anyone. It is complex, and takes committment to understand its world, but that perspective and understanding is worth it tenfold. This book changed my life and my view of my world.