Search - Six Moon Dance

One of Tepper's better books, I think. And it even had a major male character without any major, horrible flaws to his humanity!
I think I would have enjoyed it a bit more if I hadn't read it directly after reading The Companions, however - it shares a lot of the same elements/themes (especially the concept of a sentient world-organism with separable, seemingly-independent parts that are actually part of the whole.)

Upon second reading:

In Six Moon Dance, Tepper introduces her readers to the world of Newholme - a colony world that has developed a unique way of dealing with the challenges that a new world has given them. In this strict society, where there are more men than women, with few exceptions, women are required to marry and bear children - but they are also socially powerful, and considered to be entitled to "compensatory joys" in the form of trained male courtesans. Unlike many feminist renditions of alternate societies, this one is very interesting, because its not simply a reverse situation, and its neither a utopia nor a dystopia - simply a different society with its own pros and cons.
On Newholme, we meet Mouche - a young man who is sold to a Consort training house due to his family's poverty, but who learns quickly to adapt and embrace his new situation.
Meanwhile, however, Newholme has come to the atttention of the Questioner - a bionic construct which exists to travel to different planets and ensure that they are adhering to certain ethical strictures. Together with a team that includes, strangely, two young ballet dancers, she sets off to inspect the situation on Newholme. But will it be the strict gender rules of their society that come under her surveillance - or have the people of Newholme been hiding something more shameful, and more strange?
The latter, of course, is the case, and the revelations that come are imaginative and interesting - but, at, times, I felt like the plot was getting a bit too complex, piling twists on top of twists, and packing too many different issues into a single book. It also gets a bit too unrealistically grotesque toward the end, with Nightbreed-like creatures who have been deformed in far-too-obviously-metaphorical ways. I enjoyed the novel, but I feel that it would have been a better book, structurally, if it stuck to the first plotline that was brought up - the society of Newholme, and the Questioner, without bringing in the multiple plot strands that appear later.

From Publishers Weekly
Ambitiously choreographed and executed without a misstep, Tepper's complex new novel follows her acclaimed The Family Tree into a profound ecological and sociological commentary on human individuality. Originally settled by now-vanished immigrants from the testosterone-rich planet of Thor, the matriarchal world of Newholme faces imminent volcanic destruction. To determine whether Newholme's ruling Hags and their society deserve to be saved, the galactic Council of Worlds dispatches a cybernetic super-grandma, the Great Questioner, who collects a brilliantly conceived multispecies team to probe mysteries deep in Newholme's past. Tepper courageously tackles touchy issues like gender dominance with grace and wit. Through handsome charmer Mouche, sold by his parents into Hunk toy-boy training, Tepper unveils the Hag-ridden female will-to-power, just as threatening to individual freedom as that of the horrid male supremacist-schemers she depicts. Tepper deftly conjoins a superb awareness of otherness with penetrating insight into selfhood in this shining, bravura performance. (July) FYI: Tepper's Beauty (1991) was voted Best Fantasy Novel of the Year by readers of Locus magazine.

From Amazon.com:

In Six Moon Dance, veteran fantasy and science fiction writer Sheri S. Tepper tells the tale of the strange planet Newholme. An intriguing human society occupies the metal-poor planet, a society with gender values quite different from Earth, resulting from a virus that kills 50 percent of baby girls at birth. Newholmians use the best and the worst of dogma, religion, and "patriarchy" to uphold a society where men manage the money but women hold the keys to power through church, reproductive control, and their own short supply. "Family men" pay exorbitant dowries in order to gain a temporary wife, contracted for wifely duties and reproduction for a number of years. When their marriage contracts are finished, the women, relieved of duty, retire to enjoy the sexual services of male "Consorts."

The plot here involves an official Questioner who visits Newholme to investigate reports of human rights abuses, the strange native inhabitants whose biology may hold the key to human survival on the planet, and a disastrous lunar alignment. Although quite creative, Tepper's plot is simply not as gripping as the sociology and society she invents for Newholme. She uses her feminist instincts and knowledge about the sexes and religion to create a world worth taking a look at. James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award judges should be sure to take a look at Six Moon Dance for its unique take on gender roles.