Gibbon's Decline and Fall

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Tepper Shadow's End can be characterized as a quirkily feminist writer whose novels often question whether humanity might be better off with a smaller, more docile male population. This theme, combined with the author's ambivalence about Catholicism, informs this fable of ethics, feminism and transcendence, which employs an intriguing concept involving an alternate branching of the evolutionary tree. Carolyn Crespin comes from a stultifying family that believes women should be seen and not heard. When she escapes to college in the early 1960s, she helps form the Decline and Fall Club, comprised of herself and six other women including a devout nun, a radical lesbian artist and a brilliant scientist. They band together to protect one of their members, an exotic beauty named Sova, from unwanted male attention. During a 40-year gap in the narrative, conservatism and misogyny increase, a focused evil grows and Sova mysteriously disappears. The tale resumes at the dawning of the Millennium, when terrorist bag ladies are on the rise and sexual desire is on the wane. Now, Carolyn and her friends must defeat an embodiment of violence and ultra-patriarchal masculinity or see women reduced to the level of walking wombs. As always, Tepper creates excellent female characters transported by a swiftly flowing plot. Her proposed solutions for the world's problems, however, may leave male readers wondering why they should settle for being little more than ambulatory sperm banks. July

Library Journal

Seven women friends form the Decline and Fall Club in college in the 1950s and meet every year until Sophy disappears in 1998. The remaining six search for her in 2000, believing Sophy has the answers to the world's declining interest in sex and rise in suicides and the sinister plot of a misogynous cabal bent on world domination. Tepper Shadow's End, LJ 11/15/94 deftly interweaves the six women's lives with a history of the organized persecution of women since the downfall of goddesses. This feminist approach to millennial hysteria is highly recommended for sf and women's fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 4/1/96.]

Carl Hays

Tepper uses the approaching millennium as inspiration for a yarn about the impact of women's inequality on the speculative collapse of civilization. In 1959 seven young college women have in common gripes against male-dominated society that prompt them to form the Decline and Fall Club, dedicated to eradicating misogynist practices. Among their number are aspiring lawyer Carolyn and the enigmatic and beautiful foreigner Sophy, whose past and origins remain vague. Now the year 2000 looms. Sophy is mysteriously missing, and Carolyn comes out of retirement to defend a mother accused of killing her child against a misogynist prosecutor named Jagger. Behind Jagger is the American Alliance, a powerful organization that may be responsible for an alarming rise in suicides and a corresponding decline in population growth. Fortunately, Sophy and her mystery will reunite the Decline and Fall Club to act on their original ideals of protecting women and thereby civilization. Tepper indulges too much conspiracy hokum to make this book as good as her earlier successes, yet her many devotees and fans of the growing subgenre of feminist sf won't be disappointed.