Nimisha's Ship / Anne McCaffrey

Nimisha's Ship

category: science fiction, romance, author:

Anne McCaffrey

original copyright 1998, read in September 2011

Agamedes' opinion: 6 out of 10

McCaffrey at her sweetest...

It's an easy book to read... as long as you can stand saccharine! Well, no, not that bad. But really:

A wormhole in space is swallowing spaceships. The ships get damaged in transit and -- at best -- land heavily. On unknown and highly dangerous planets. Crew and passengers die horribly as they learn the dangers of their new home...

Until Nimisha arrives.

Nimisha has a brand new spaceship which she designed and (almost) built by herself. So Nimisha and Nimisha's ship arrived undamaged and introduce themselves to the earlier castaways... And no-one else dies. Well, they can't die, because everyone is so nice.

I do have a worry here: No-one dies because, in part, Nimisha has brought big guns. Now the killer alien bird-things can be shot before they kill any more of the castaways. Which is good because the birds are big enough and intelligent enough to be a serious hazard.

Intelligent killer birds? Whose planet has been invaded by creatures from space who take the land and kill any creature that poses a threat? Do these birds really have to be killed?!

The First Lensman would have communicated with the birds. Reached a compromise, brought the birds into civilisation. Made them strong friends of humans. (Or possibly exterminated the lot of them, if they turned out to be Eddorian.)

At least Nimisha should have tried...

Anyway. Having quickly made the planet a safe home for humans and cute, friendly aliens, what is the next source of tension for our heroine? This is where "romance" becomes an essential category for this book:

1. Will Nimisha find a suitable mate? Quickly settled.
2. Will her daughter -- left at home -- get there on time for her coming-of-age party? That takes a few chapters to be settled.
3. How will they ensure that the only unpleasant character on the planet does not need to be invited to the coming-of-age party?

Yes, the problems are serious... Sigh...

Yes, it's a romance. Not as much heavy breathing and long lingering looks as Twilight. Nowhere near as much fun, either.

An enjoyable book. No need to go out of your way to read it.

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The new version of Blogger seems to have lost the ability to link to the book at Amazon. No worries: if you like this book then I'm sure you can find your own copy. Nor will I miss the income from people following my links... earnings so far are still under ten cents :-) But I have included a different type of picture to brighten up the post.

..o0o..

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