(Note: This is a reposting from my previous journal database.)
It’s my first media review, and I have to pick on one of my all-time favorite authors. This woman helped convince me that the written word is one of the most inspiring and wonderful tools humans have ever created. When I start having delusions of adequacy, when I begin again to dream of being An Author… she is among my key inspirations.
She, being one Anne McCaffrey, is also getting on in years. No, I’m not being ageist, but it’s the only explanation I have for the gradual shift in her writing. She used to have more grit and fire in her plots and characterizations. She used not to be so afraid to punish the bad guys. My wife and I both noticed this in the last couple of Talents novels (“Pegasus In Space” and “The Tower And The Hive”), and the kid gloves are still firmly tied in place for “Nimisha’s Ship.”
Lest you think I didn’t like the book, please allow me to say that it’s a pleasant read. It’s nearly a whole new continuity, unless you happen to have stumbled across “The Coelura” some time back. There are some slightly different things she’s trying to accomplish in this novel. Some of them succeed admirably, others are just kind of silly. So long as you’re willing to check your cynicism at the door, you should get a kick out of this novel.
Sadly, that’s my biggest problem. At some point in the story, the Big Bad Villain And Company are completely written out. Echoes of “The Tower And The Hive” haunt these pages… A Villain whose name starts with the letter V is introduced, sort of, allowed to thrash around a bit in random paragraphs, and then is simply discarded in a bit of ancillary dialog later on. “Oh, him? He got his. Now, moving right along…”
There’s another key part of the later novel that readers of the “Rowan” series of books will probably recognize, but I won’t give away here. You’ll either love it or groan in misery. I did both.
All told, it’s nice light reading for all that it skips lightly through years’ worth of events in the lives of a handful of people we don’t really get to know all that well. Everything’s tidied up in a neat package at the end, aww gee isn’t that nice?
In the end, if you like the romantic happy side of McCaffrey’s work you should adore “Nimisha’s Ship.” If you were hoping for something with a little more meat on its bones, I don’t really know what to suggest other than maybe to go borrow some of her earlier books from the library. Ye gods, I sure hope that “Skies Of Pern” doesn’t disappoint me the way that the last Pegasus and Rowan books did, and the way this one did as well.
(Note: Yes, “Skies” is out but I have to wait for the paperback. You can’t really be in that big of a hurry for me to write another Media review, can you? Maybe you should seek professional help.)
