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I have tried twice and I just don't care for this book. ( )

Tepper really is a wonderful writer - her books are intelligent, inventive, superbly plotted and littered with prose that leaves te reader breathless.Her major strain of work is science fiction with the technology in the background and an emphasis on social and personal relationships, a deep concern for people combined with a sharply satirical social analysis. The Visitor begins seeming to be borderline fantasy/sci-fi, but then combines a storyline of apocalyptic fiction - the primary setting is the human civilisation that has survived the impact of an asteroid. The backbone idea is Clarke's Law that "any sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic", with the superstitious survivors managing to venerate and fear pre-apocalypse technology, and those who do understand that it is technology faced with a superior, possibly alien, force. Tepper doesn't leave it there; she takes a direction you will never predict. Read it. ( )

Throughout most of this book, I thought it was great.
The milieu is an innovative and effective blend of post-apocalypse, straight-out horror, and science fiction. It's a complicated world, and Tepper does an amazing job of showing-not-telling, revealing elements of the situation she's created gradually...
The protagonist, Disme, is shown to progress from her repressed situation where she is terrorized by her stepmother and her even-worse stepsister, gradually finding the ability to express her identity and to seek out the truth about her society...
And her current society (strongly influenced by religious fanatics after a disastrous asteroid collision with Earth) is very effectively realized, in a way that reflects upon our world today...
However, as the book progresses, the supernatural elements become more pronounced, in a way that, for me, compromised the internal believability of the story...
And then, at the very end, AAGH! What happened? It was like Tepper suddenly doubted herself, and said, "Wait! I bet my readers won't GET what I've been writing about for the last 400 pages! I'd better spell it all out!" And suddenly we get a long, boring dialogue with god. Yikes. It's an ending that's both pedantic and absurd. Very disappointing - because the first part of the book really is excellent (and disturbing!). ( )

In general, I love Sheri S. Tepper's work. Her voice speaks right to me, and the settings and characters she writes of always inspire me.

Visitor started out with the promise of another Tepper book I'd like. And it held that promise up until the very end, where it puttered out with one of the lamest endings I've ever read - very close to a 'Deus ex Machina' type cop-out.

I highly recommend Ms. Tepper. Just not this one. ( )