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A review by thepurplebookwyrm
Gibbon's Decline and Fall by Sheri S. Tepper
challenging
dark
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
Full video review: https://youtu.be/6QU-j-MdAdw.
Okay, so, this one was wild... mostly in a bad way. Let's get the boring stuff out of the way first: I enjoyed Tepper's prose, as I enjoyed it in the other novels I read written by her. It was fluid, decently evocative, just-about-the-right-amount of descriptive, etc...
I'll give points for the fact the story centred on a group of lifelong female friends who all met in college, though by the time of the main storyline, all are middle-aged/post-menopausal. That was neat! What was also neat, was the fact they didn't always necessarily agree on everything, or have the exact same beliefs when it came to politics or relationships. Each character felt decently distinct; the nun had her own beliefs, so did the lawyer, the artist, the geneticist, etc... It all felt credible, and somewhat refreshing as well. The side or secondary characters, for their part, were mostly fine as well. I guess the story's main antagonist was a little strong on the 'blind misogynistic hatred', but it was still believable from a character psychology point of view. Especially given the ginormous problem that was eventually posed, in terms of world-building and theming, by the actual Big Bad™ of the story...
So, deep breaths, here we go.
World-building and theming, the good:
• The story starts our relatively light on the SFF, but you do get a "loss of libido" pandemic, which I thought was quite the original concept! The very slight "sex itself is the problem/root cause of Patriarchy" stance this leaned into wasn't to my personal taste (much less belief), but it wasn't egregiously eye-roll inducing either, and it was intellectually stimulating to a certain extent – so that's all good.
• As expected, there was legitimately good (and properly feminist) commentary on the sex-based oppression of women, beauty standards in relation to heterosexuality, motherhood, gender, etc... On overpopulation and environmental destruction, and on the Nature v. Nurture dynamic. Some things were said about testosterone and sexual violence that didn't entirely pass my sniff test, but this book was written in the 1990s, and it really wasn't the worst I've seen either, by a long shot – so fine.
But then, yeah, it got weird.
World-building and theming, the bad (and wtf, honestly):
• Lizard people. No, seriously, LIZARD PEOPLE. Okay, technically, dinosaur people I guess, since them bitches stated they'd evolved from the saurian-avian line. So hey, cool, at least they weren't alien lizard people! But what. The. Actual. Fuck. Ms Tepper. 😂 I'll say this: you legitimately surprised me there; I wouldn't have seen that coming in a million freaking years! But so yeah, this novel went from low-level SF with a 'libido loss plague' and suspended animation prison tanks to "let's crank this bitch up to 11, GO BIG OR GO HOME WOOOOO!" levels of (quite frankly immersion-breaking in this case) SF... and then fucking fantasy! Cuz okay, we got [parthenogenetic/all-female, if you please, "lizard people" (who were supposedly the fairy folk/nature spirits of old legend, yeesh 🤦♀️), but then we got a fucking Patriarchy alien! The über Big Bad of the story was, in fact, an alien entity – Cthulhu's third cousin no doubt – that fed on pain and violence, and was the principal cause of the emergence of Patriarchy in our species. It then got defeated by the Goddess (yes), in a literal deus ex machina. Fuck me.
• My brain noped out, because that shit cheapened everything! You can't just say Patriarchy was created by anevil alien in a story purportedly taking place in our real world, with its real world history. Not with me! The origins of Patriarchy is one of my pet niche topics of interest, I live and breathe this stuff, and I can't, not in a book that started out with decent feminist theming! Cuz then the freaking dinolizard folk just kept on tacking contradictory and inaccurate shit onto their tale of the elder days of humankind: saying we started out "animalistic", but then started to get wiser, only to be led in a more "chimp-like" direction again by the evil Patriarchy alien. Then you get a spiel about the Abrahamic religions and their fostering of male bodily urges, reproduction at all costs, etc... And I'm like: a) fuck the (always tragically oversimplified) chimp stuff, especially when you also mention bonobos earlier in the book, only for them to become magically irrelevant when it's convenient, b) if anything, the Abrahamic religions tend to over-value male-coded "reason" over Nature, the body, and the female. Plus, there's also condemning of humans destroying the environment earlier in the story, so why double-back like this and shit on the animal, the fleshy, etc... Where's the balance that was initially valued?! So many contradictions, painful misrepresentations, and shit that just didn't make a lick of sense!
And I mean, outside of the stuff I personally found unsavoury or irritating, the simple fact is Gibbon's Decline and Fall juggled with too many concepts that didn't mesh together at all, or taken from symbols and archetypes that really shouldn't have been made as literal as they were. There was more than enough worthwhile material in the story's base premise and its 'libido loss plague'; the Dawn of Humanity and wtf 'out there science-fantasy' stuff should've been left out.
I can't fathom why Tepper went the way she did with this story, but I'm not mad I took the time to read it. The turn it took around the 85% mark was insanely disappointing, and it was nowhere near as good as The Gate to Women's Country or even the two Arbai books I read, but it wasn't a complete waste of time either.
Okay, so, this one was wild... mostly in a bad way. Let's get the boring stuff out of the way first: I enjoyed Tepper's prose, as I enjoyed it in the other novels I read written by her. It was fluid, decently evocative, just-about-the-right-amount of descriptive, etc...
I'll give points for the fact the story centred on a group of lifelong female friends who all met in college, though by the time of the main storyline, all are middle-aged/post-menopausal. That was neat! What was also neat, was the fact they didn't always necessarily agree on everything, or have the exact same beliefs when it came to politics or relationships. Each character felt decently distinct; the nun had her own beliefs, so did the lawyer, the artist, the geneticist, etc... It all felt credible, and somewhat refreshing as well. The side or secondary characters, for their part, were mostly fine as well. I guess the story's main antagonist was a little strong on the 'blind misogynistic hatred', but it was still believable from a character psychology point of view. Especially given the ginormous problem that was eventually posed, in terms of world-building and theming, by the actual Big Bad™ of the story...
So, deep breaths, here we go.
World-building and theming, the good:
• The story starts our relatively light on the SFF, but you do get a "loss of libido" pandemic, which I thought was quite the original concept! The very slight "sex itself is the problem/root cause of Patriarchy" stance this leaned into wasn't to my personal taste (much less belief), but it wasn't egregiously eye-roll inducing either, and it was intellectually stimulating to a certain extent – so that's all good.
• As expected, there was legitimately good (and properly feminist) commentary on the sex-based oppression of women, beauty standards in relation to heterosexuality, motherhood, gender, etc... On overpopulation and environmental destruction, and on the Nature v. Nurture dynamic. Some things were said about testosterone and sexual violence that didn't entirely pass my sniff test, but this book was written in the 1990s, and it really wasn't the worst I've seen either, by a long shot – so fine.
But then, yeah, it got weird.
World-building and theming, the bad (and wtf, honestly):
• My brain noped out, because that shit cheapened everything! You can't just say Patriarchy was created by an
And I mean, outside of the stuff I personally found unsavoury or irritating, the simple fact is Gibbon's Decline and Fall juggled with too many concepts that didn't mesh together at all, or taken from symbols and archetypes that really shouldn't have been made as literal as they were. There was more than enough worthwhile material in the story's base premise and its 'libido loss plague'; the Dawn of Humanity and wtf 'out there science-fantasy' stuff should've been left out.
I can't fathom why Tepper went the way she did with this story, but I'm not mad I took the time to read it. The turn it took around the 85% mark was insanely disappointing, and it was nowhere near as good as The Gate to Women's Country or even the two Arbai books I read, but it wasn't a complete waste of time either.