Most of Sheri S. Tepper's books are a lot longer than this one and I prefer short books, so I was very pleased to receive Northshore in a Secret Santa at last years BookCrossing Unconvention. So I was peeved to find that it doesn't have a proper ending but more or less stops dead, as if a longer work was chopped in half at the point that some of the characters are about to set off in search of fabled Southshore!

Apart for that, it was an interesting story, set on an alien planet colonised by humans, where a fake religion with a taboo against travelling West has been set up to prevent them finding out about the deal that has been made with the native inhabitants, the fliers.

I would like to know what happens next so I will try to find a copy of Southshore, and I may increase my rating if I do, as it would be higher if not for the lack of a proper ending. ( )

this is a really weird book. It drops you into an unknown world, into the middle of a story without any explanation. I've been able to glean the following: man came to this new world, which was already inhabited by sentient flying beings, who were on the verge of extincting themselves by over eating their foodstock. We were poisonous to them, but their blood gave humans longevity. So a system was setup where our dead become their food, and people disappear" as live food. In exchange, select few humans are given the longevity treatment. Basically at the flashpoint where the people are beginning to realize what is going on. Really hard, because there is so much new stuff that you have to extrapolate." ( )

creepy relationship, ftl

Not my favorite Tepper series. That would be the True Game books. ( )