(Another review originally posted on Facebook)

I read a lot of Tepper back in the late 1990s, and I’m not entirely sure why I stopped, because her books were generally good. She’s notable for starting her career late – she was in her fifties when her first novel was published. So never give up.

The Song of Mavin Manyshaped (1985, USA) is an early work, her fourth or fifth book, I think, and the first of a trilogy set on a fantasy world populated by numerous different races, which later proves to be a trilogy of trilogies and, in fact, is science fiction of a sort. Mavin is a Shifter, although she has yet to come into her Talent. She’s one of only two female Shifters in Panderbat, and it’s clearly implied the women are there to provide sexual services for the male Shifters, and to bear children too, of course. But Mavin is not yet old enough, and her older sister is apparently infertile.

After developing her Shifting ability in secret, Mavin escapes Panderbat and flees to a friendly relative’s castle. En route, her young brother – who develops a different Talent – is taken ill with “ghoul plague”, so Mavin must help the shadowpeople and defeat the ghoul king in order to cure her brother and set everything to rights.

There’s numerous references to games and such, as if the world itself were a game board, which makes everything seem especially unreal – and reminds me a little of Jack Chalker’s Wellworld series, and… I’m sure there’s another one but it escapes me. Vance, probably. Anyway. It’s all very light and inconsequential, but the feminist ire burns through, and I’m surprised these early works aren’t as well known as Tepper’s later novels. An oeuvre definitely worth exploring. And I definitely must read the other two books in the trilogy some time.