Styled as an ecological mystery, Grass presents one of Tepper's earliest and perhaps most radical statements on themes that would come to dominate her fiction, in which despoliation of the planet is explicitly linked to gender and social inequalities.

[1] Interest in the novel continued, and it was included in the SF Masterworks classic science fiction paperback collection in 2002.

Given that the mainly aristocratic inhabitants of Grass have developed an obsession with a localised variant of fox hunting using the planet's native fauna in place of the horses, hounds, and foxes found on Earth, Sanctity chooses as its investigators the Westriding-Yrarier family, whose equestrian background and upper class roots may enable them to successfully infiltrate the aristocratic society and learn more about the hitherto secretive planet.

Tepper's work has been situated by some critics into a significant lineage of feminist science fiction by women, in particular the moderate feminism of the 1980s that included authors like Joan Slonczewski and Pamela Sargent.

"[3] Other critiques have dismissed Tepper's work as popular entertainment sullied by her politics—making, according to one critic, even the apocalypse seem boring[4] (though supporters praise the politics in the Arbai trilogy for condemning ecological violence and bigotry).