ewel Delis, the narrator and central character of Sheri S. Tepper's new novel, The Companions, comes of age on an overpopulated Earth dominated by the towers that house its billions of inhabitants. This is a world so pressed for space that there is no longer any room even for the few animals that survive as pets and companions. When an edict is passed outlawing all nonhuman life on Earth, Jewel fears for the dogs she and another animal lover have cared for, but finding a temporary sanctuary for the dogs is only one of her many problems.
Her young husband, torn away from her by a wealthy and powerful family that objects to his marriage, soon disappears with his team of explorers on an alien planet; Jewel is forced to go into hiding when his mother accuses her of having something to do with his disappearance. The only way to make a life for herself, and possibly the only way to find a refuge for the animals she has come to love, is to become an assistant to her half-brother Paul, a gifted linguist whose work is deciphering alien languages—and her relationship with the spoiled and temperamental Paul is difficult at best.
Watched over by one of her benefactors, the powerful and well-connected bureaucrat Gainor Brandt, Jewel travels to planets that are being assessed for possible settlement, and encounters a variety of intelligent aliens who might be either humankind's allies or enemies. When Jewel and Paul are assigned to Moss, a disorienting world of exotic plants and dancing lights, she hopes that she has found a future home for the animals she hopes to save. But an alien civilization, the warlike Derac, also has an outpost on Moss, the rusting hulks of lost ships from Earth have been discovered on that planet's high plateau, and the alluring life forms that proliferate on Moss present their own unknown and potentially lethal dangers.
Fascinating humans and aliens alike
One of Sheri Tepper's gifts as a novelist is her attention to detail, the ability to create realistic and seemingly lived-in worlds. She is also extremely inventive, with enough interesting and well-depicted characters, societies and plot complications to keep readers turning the pages. In The Companions, she gives us an appealing and sympathetic protagonist in Jewel Delis and a host of other well-drawn characters, among them Jewel's adventurous Aunt Hattie, her feckless husband Witt, the aliens Sannassee and Walking Sunshine, and Gavi Norchis, a woman who has grown up among the descendants of the shipwrecked humans on Moss. On top of that, Tepper offers intriguing glimpses of a variety of alien cultures, including the lizardlike Derac, the doglike Simusi, the ancient and standoffish Phain and the willogs of Moss. By the end of her novel, she manages to tie all the many strands of her complicated plots and subplots together in ways that will both surprise and satisfy.
Tepper's gifts as a storyteller are great enough to obscure her faults, one of which is a kind of incoherence. The amount of detail she provides and that makes her scenes and characters live may also prevent readers from noticing that she hasn't really explained how a particular piece of technology works, or even given that many clues as to how it might work. The various plot complications and inventive cultures, both human and alien, are involving enough to keep most readers from wondering if the author had any clear idea of where she was heading, or instead figured that if she kept introducing new elements, eventually she'd find a way to sort them all out. Her pacing is often off; there are scenes that end too abruptly, particularly toward the end of the book, and others, such as Jewel's halting conversations with genetically altered dogs, that run on too long. Tepper also has a habit of withholding crucial bits of information earlier in her story, only to reveal them later on. It isn't that she doesn't play fair with readers—the clues are all there, and the surprises prepared for—it's just that important events seem needlessly obscured or buried, which only adds to an overall sense of confusion.
Tepper is too much of a natural storyteller to disappoint her readers, most of whom will find The Companions a smart, engaging and involving space opera with some serious points to make. But with tighter writing and a more focused authorial intelligence, this novel could have been much more.
