Tepper once again weaves her poignant imagination with superb writing to tell a story brimming with insightful notes for our contemporary era.

Like most of her novels, The Companions is richly and imaginatively told. The story centers on dog-lover Jewel Delis and her experiences growing up on an over-populated Earth in the grip of interstellar alien conflict. Delis travels on assignment to the mysterious planet Moss, where a "world consciousness" is discovered. Tepper deftly explores the themes of "human nature," language, ecology, and ecofeminism. She especially focuses on the issue of the endangerment of animals and what cavalier disregard for "whole systems" can cost humans.

Tepper juxtaposes different types of relationships in the story as a means to explore the social and ecological ramifications of the idea of companionship. The characters wrestle with both positive and negative relationships between family members, between genders, between spouses, and between species. She contrasts the mutually supporting companionship between humans and dogs, to the "companionship" between master/slave and owner/concubine.

Tepper is skilled at evoking thoughtful consideration of some of the key issues of today through story. My only wish would be to have a smoother balance between character development and action-packed narrative. ( )

This book had a promising premise. That Earth suffers from overpopulation due to retirees returning from off-world colonies, basically the planet Earth becomes the state of Florida. That due to population pressure, religious extremists create a movement to ban all animals from Earth because only man is created in God's image. A group of animal lovers run an underground railroad for pets.

In theory, all this is great. But unfortunately, the story decends into absurdity. Throw in an ancient alien race of environmentalists and another nearly extinct race of super-shapeshifting aliens bent on destruction (and responsible for the creation of humanity), who take the form of dogs - they actually think that dogs enslaved humans rather than humans domesticating dogs - and you get a complex mess of polemics. Is it intended as satire? Or is it bad writing? It is hard to tell. Without giving the ending away, Tepper relies on a deus ex machina to extricate the heroine from the crisis at the end of the book.

This is not one of her greatest efforts - but Tepper on a ordinary day is better than many on their best day! ( )

Filled with different alien races and alien cultures that Earthers are still learning to understand and cope with 700 years in the future. Earth itself is supremely over populated and many Earthers are jealous of any other Earth animals using up 'their' (the humans') resources, such as air, water and space. Quietly opposing them are the Earthers trying to save the few animals left from extinction. Jewel Delis shows us what one person is capable of, given the opportunity and some help from the higher ups. A good book to get one thinking about what ifs that ended up being a great adventure as well. ( )

Lots of aliens, some neat ideas, and a surprising focus on environmental/interspecies harmony, but the writing and plotting is poor. ( )

Note to self: give up on Sheri Tepper already. Her talent for evocative description is always subsumed, sooner or later, by her misguided preachiness. The protagonist of this one shows up scientists, linguists, and diplomats alike with her powers of Intuition. /eyeroll/ And the last third of the book reads like an outline: show, don't tell, Sheri. ( )