Crystal Line

I read this series back in the 60's and this is my fourth time buying the series. It is so well written that you can fall into the characters. When you can imagine something such as this so well that when you finally look up from the work and are momentarily disoriented (you can't imangine for a second where you are). This is not a book, it is a teleportation to a different existance. Her books are just as relevent now as before. Bravo

A great read, wrapping up the story started in Crystal Singer and continued in Killashandra.

Killashandra, Crystal Singer, returns for a third novel in the Crystal Series. I recommend you read these in order as the events in the first two lead up to this novel.Killashandra is now a mature Crystal Singer. She enjoys the benefits of life on Ballybran as one of the rare and valuable miners of Crystal. The career of a Singer brings wealth, long life and a certain cachet in the Galaxy. But it comes at a heavy price; loss of memory and thus an inability to maintain any meaningful relationships. Singers are encouraged to document their lives with a recorded journal so they can pick up the pieces of their personality and not become shallow and venal. Killashandra and Lars Dahl, her new-found love from the previous novel, face new challenges for the Heptite Guild. But their relationship is threatened by forces behind the scenes. Is Lars working for or against Killashandra? This is a fine conclusion to the two previous novels and one of my favorite series.

I truly believe this is one of McCaffrey's best collection of stories. The World of Pern was absolutely wonderful and this trilogy only improves my opinion of her. Killa is such a wonderfully diverse character and she comes to life in this last book! So does the world of the crystal singer! Its rewards, its costs, everything about crystal singing is so interesting and absolutely amazing! I was enthralled. Lars and Killa go through a lot and some of their experiences and feelings could have been elaborated on maybe but even as it was I was impressed. McCaffrey is a genius. To think of a story that's so diffrent but so very good is the work of a master!

I read McCaffrey when I want to be comforted by the presence of basically decent people. The plots don't matter to me much and the attempts at true sci-fi technology are something to skipped over as quickly as possible (eg. the workings of a Hive ship.) For that reason, I have also enjoyed McCaffrey's non-Sci-fi books, in particular "A Stitch in Snow". The Crystal Singer series is my favorite sci-fi trilogy and Crystal Line is my favorite of the three books. In Crystal Singer, we have the usual angry and mis-treated teenager who strikes out on her own and is attracted to the domineering macho types. In Killashandra, we have a woman who has matured enough to change her taste in men. But in Crystal Line we have one of the very few "middle-aged" (I know she's actually several hundred years old according to the plot) heroines in sci-fi. Her decisions about what she will do with her life, and who she will do it with, are long over. But she still has decisions to make about how she will deal with both the choices that she has made and the things that life has done to her.

I have never read anything so enthralling in my life. It instantly grabbed me, and I was unable to put it down. The story line is always eventful, and I never once got bored with it. It was always "What's gonna happen next?" A brilliant read.