The Visitor

I did like this book. I found myself reading it while stirring a pot on the stove, and "rescheduling" a trip to town so that I could stay at home with the book.

The "bad guys" were really icky. The author was a little preachy toward the end (though I've read other reviews that indicate this is normal for her).

There was a lot of build up, the book was engrossing, but it seemed like the good vs. evil battle was tied up a little too easily and neatly; the bad guys, for all their horrific actions throughout the book, seemed to go down fairly easily when the good guys rode into town. The whole denouement didn't take nearly as many pages as I would have expected (refer back to part about the bad guys being vanquished fairly easily). ( )

A friend was nice enough to send a copy of Sheri S. Tepper's The Visitor my way recently. I finished it on the train this weekend. It smacks of Deus Ex Machina, quite literally (get it? heh...), which usually is quite a turn-off for me. However, The Visitor built up to it. I was expecting the hands of deities by the time they arrived in the story. The plot was quite twisted in very concise ways, which I liked.

An author's style is what usually grabs me, though, and Ms. Tepper has it to spare. I adore how writers such as Amy Bloom, Pat Califia, Sarah Waters, and especially Margaret Atwood break up bits and pieces of different stories by placing them between each other. Doing that is difficult while holding the reader's attention. Some authors manage rougher transitions than others. Ms. Teppers are about middle of the line insofar as that is concerned. She's not so smooth as Margaret Atwood but nowhere near as rough as David Brin's. So I dug that.

The really great bits of Visitor have little to do with transition, though. Ms. Tepper uses more of the five senses other than sight to describe things in the first chapter than most authors use in an entire novel. ( )

Disappointing; it had an almost juvenile quality I wasn't expecting. Too long winded at the end. ( )

Fascinating. Complex and bizarre but utterly captivating.. Tepper is becoming a new favorite of mine! ( )

I really didn't think much of this. Tepper does a literal deus ex machina at the end, which seems to me to be such a lazy cop-out. But then, I have no time for gods or religion... I've enjoyed other books by her so much more than this one. ( )