The Ship Errant

Of the five books that have been written in the Brain & Brawn series by Anne McCaffrey and various co-authors, my favorite was "The Ship Who Won," the direct prequel to this title. So when I saw that co-author Jody-Lynn Nye had penned a solo follow-up, I naturally bought it. One critic says of it on the back cover that "Anne McCaffrey should be proud," and I'm sure she is. Carialle, for those unfamiliar with the series, is a "brain"--a human being born so badly malformed that her only hope for survival was to be encased permanently in an artificial environment and trained to become the guiding force of a space station or (in her case) a spaceship--a Central Worlds explorer-craft whose mission is to "seek out new life and new civilizations," as Star Trek had it. After lengthy training, she chose a "brawn" (a normal person who could act as her arms and legs)--Keff, a romantic and amateur linguist with a weakness for holographic adventure games like Myths and Legends--and they set out on what will be a 25-year partnership. In the previous book, they discovered the planet Ozran, where two lost colonies--one human, one of the amphibioid Cridi--co-existed and shared a Cridi technology known as "Core" which permitted feats that would seem magical to nontechnological races. Now they have been assigned to carry a Cridi delegation home to their world of origin and invite the mother culture to become members of CW. What they didn't realize before they left Ozran was that the Cridi homeworld is close--literally painfully so--to a region of space where Carialle once suffered a catastrophic mishap which nearly destroyed her then ship-body, and was (or thinks she was) boarded and stripped by beings she was never able to identify. Upon re-entering that region, she suffers flashbacks which lead Inspector-General Maxwell-Corey to conclude that she is insane and should be removed not only from the mission but from service entirely. But Cari's not giving up without a fight, and neither is Keff. When the CW ship sent to relieve her is attacked by a pirate craft, they realize that Carialle's memories were accurate, and take off in pursuit of the pirates. Cridi friends old and new join their quest, which leads eventually to the discovery of yet another sapient race, the griffin-like Thelerie, and to Carialle's vindication when the pirate ringleader is captured. What I liked best about this book were the Cridi and the Thelerie, two delightfully original and well-realized alien species. The Cridi, tiny but lionhearted creatures that resemble common Earth frogs, speak in both vocal and sign languages and have been struggling for 50 years to get their space program back on track, unaware that the reason for their zero success rate is that the pirates, lurking in the outer regions of their system, destroy every ship they launch. The Thelerie, who live in the neighboring solar system, are the innocent tools of the pirates (or Melange, as they call themselves)

Good story line and plotting, but a bit thin in spots. Could have fleshed it out a little more. I think McCeffrey writes better by herself. If you like the other ship stories you'll like this one, but it doesn't have the depth of other McCaffrey yarns.