Book review: Grass

Grass, by Sheri S. Tepper. As foreshadowed in my review of Raising the Stones. This is the second time I've read it, and I liked it again. Give me a decade to forget the details and I might even read it again. As I said at RtS, Grass is much better, though having read RtS some of the flaws of Grass become more obvious; most obviously the rather unsubtle philosophy, although it is done much better here than in RtS.

This review is rather perceptive, pointing out a variety of flaws. The letter is so crass as to be almost not a hole, more just an allow-me-this-license, but still. And the sheer awfulness of the church hierarchy as portrayed rather reminds me of the Evil Patriarchy of RtS; she isn't very good at shades of grey. The shame here is that the Evil Church isn't really needed, or could have a much smaller role; in the end, they don't really do anything. The virus, meh, well I suppose it had to have some explanation.

A more subtle hole is what one often finds with these discovering-things-on-strange-planets type books: the unbelievable amateurishness of the "science" or investigation, the degree that things are unsurveilled or the authorities uninterested, and artefacts uninvestigated.

Having said all that, it's a decent story well told that carries you along, especially if you mostly blip over the philosophy.

Incidentally... as an ex-climatologist... I think the notion of an all-grass planet just won't work. Wot no rivers? All the landscape uniformly flat? No seas, no deserts? Pole-to-equator temperature difference so small that grass can survive everywhere? Somewhat similarly to Dune, these points aren't really explored.