Shadow's End, by Sheri S. Tepper
Nice social-philosophical SF with a rather deus ex ending
(Review posted 3 Jan 2005 18:43:42)

So Sheri S. Tepper seems to have this powerful meme in her head, where the Authorities in some cultural group (on, say, some planet) have made a secret deal with some powerful nonhuman forces, and in exchange for something or other the nonhuman forces are given a certain (urm) access to the humans in the cultural group. A kind of access that the humans involved would probably not sign up for if given the choice, so the whole thing must be kept secret from the citizenry, and/or the citizenry must keep it secret from themselves by more or less elaborate forms of denial.

The first part of "Shadow's End" builds up this meme nicely; the creepy hints about what might really be going on with the humans on Dinadh are woven subtly into our introduction to their culture and society. Also interesting (and very roughly parallel) is the culture and society of the Shadows, the conventionally invisible servants who make daily life run smoothly for the powerful on Earth (now one vast city called Alliance Central), and the idea of an interplanetary humanity gradually destroying the available habitable planets (and ultimately themselves) through overpopulation and "homo-norming".

When it comes time to have the various characters and elements meet and resolve the mysteries, things don't go quite so well. The revelation of the human-alien relationship on Dinadh is satisfyingly horrifying, but then there's this wildly unlikely coincidence, and this mostly unexplained wormhole, and this thing that seems to be a deity of some kind, and everything gets sort of mushy for awhile just where it should be clearest and most piercing. And then at the end things get quite acceptable again, and the final cadence would leaves things nicely resolved, if it hadn't been for that mushiness just before it.

So I can't give a wholeheartedly glowing review (there're also some significant nits to pick with the technology and general future-history stuff), but it's not a bad book; it's left me with some memorable pictures and interesting notions. And it's hard to demand more than that.