Demented Kitty Misc

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.