At her best, Sheri Tepper has produced some dazzlingly imaginative fantasies. It’s been a long time since she managed to hit those heights, but some of her earlier work was truly incredible. Her ‘Marianne’ trilogy, which started with ‘Marianne, the Magus and the Manticore’, slipped largely under the radar at the time of release. Since then, it has only grown in obscurity. It deserves much, much more however.
At first introduction, the heroine of the title seems like an impossibly tedious chiché. She’s a tragic orphaned heiress, young, lovely and fey, forced into semi-squalor by the machinations of her callous half-brother. She is studying at university when she meets a tall, dark, handsome prince who promptly begins sweeping her off her feet. Even here though, there are clues that Marianne is more than she appears. She is unusually bloody-minded and fierce beneath her gentle appearance, and wages an intriguing daily war against the forces of random chaos.
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A genuine aura of menace surrounds Marianne right from the start, conjured expertly via her seemingly innocuous surroundings. This builds swiftly until Marianne suddenly finds herself flung, amnesiac, into a series of twisted nightmarish alternate realities. These border worlds are everything you’d expect from Sheri Tepper — dark, peculiar, engaging and stunningly creative. Marianne herself approaches them as a grown-up Alice might, with fiery resolve and pragmatic ruthlessness. Her dashing Prince Charming attempts to rush to the rescue, but frankly he’s barely needed.
Tepper’s gender politics are well-known, and have weakened a lot of her later work, but here they’re a delicious under-note rather than an overwhelming spice disaster. The result is simultaneously gripping, charming and strange. The Marianne books aren’t easy to find any more, but if you do spot them around, do yourself a favour and give them a go.
Well, having got to the fifth part of The Dark Is Rising, I’m willing to play your silly genre fiction game some more. A question though: what’s the target audience for this? Is it YA or rather more grown up. (In other words, do I need to vet it for my 10 year old niece or shall I wait a couple years before getting her a copy? Her copy of the TDIR will be ordered shortly.)
Well, it’s not graphically steamy or anything, but the target is adult, and some aspects of it might be a bit scary. It really depends on your neice! I’d probably still have loved it at 10, but I understand that isn’t a recommendation :) You definitely want to read it first. It may then need to wait a couple of years, and it may not.
Ahh, I’ll definately have to check these out. Thankyou for the recommendation!.
Her True Game series (3 x 3) are some of my favorite books. Especially the Jinian ones, that tie it all together and ahve some very very interesting implications to do with the planet.
It’s unfortunate it’s so hard to get a hold of a copy.