Shadow's End - Softcover

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) is the award-winning author of A Plague of Angels, Sideshow, Beauty, Raising the Stones, Grass, The Gate to Women's Country, After Long Silence, and Shadow's End. Grass was a New York Times Notable Book and Hugo Award nominee, and Beauty was voted Best Fantasy Novel by the readers of Locus magazine.

With such world-building epics as A Plague of Angels , Tepper has secured a reputation for uniquely combining elements of science fiction and fantasy that she maintains in her latest novel by delving into both mythmaking and original scientific speculation. It tells the story of Dinadh, an isolated, human-populated world surrounded by dead planets. A century ago, an unknown force or race known only as the Ularians mysteriously wiped humanity off all the planets within several light-years of Dinadh. Now the unseen Ularians have returned, and the Earth-led Alliance is asking Lutha Tallstaff to return to Dinadh to track down her missing former lover, Leelson Famber, who alone may hold the key to the Ularians' identity. Tepper makes brilliant use of alternating first- and third-person narration and also of fanciful supporting characters, such as Snark, a criminal whose punishment as a "shadow" involves constant, full-sensory monitoring by the Alliance. Although not one of Tepper's best, Shadow's End shows that her skill at inventing new cultures and their citizenry remains impressive. Carl Hays