ELITIST BOOK REVIEWS

I’ve had this book for a long time. Like, a long time. Completely my fault. Well, more appropriately my bias’s fault, because the quick-uptake I did of the book when I first got it revealed that it was science fiction. So, it got shelved until just recently, in favor of other books that I thought I’d likely enjoy more. Now, after finally picking it up off the shelf and reading the thing, I’m feeling REALLY bad that it took so long because this is a great book.
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Young Merryn and her father live by the sea, where her father fishes for his living. Merryn’s mother is dead, so it’s just the two of them living in the shack by the sea–at a time when being a fisherman grows more and more difficult, there are fewer fish being caught every time he goes out to sea.

Until one day when her father doesn’t return.
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Hey, how’s it going, Barbara? Sorry it’s been a while since you sent us this novel, and I’m only now getting to a response for you. Life, as they say, has a away; what with SPFBO-round-twos, vacations to Hawai’i, and other such takers of precious time. Anyhow, thought I’d drop you a line because I was really quite excited to read the next story in your Dying World series. Hope this format is okay as well. I know you might get the feeling that a few others are reading over your shoulder, and you’re totally right. They are. 🙂 But you should be used to that by now, what with having so many of your stories out in the wild. So, here you go.
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Ean Lambert changed the way people understood the lines that ran spaceships in LINESMAN. Now he and his friends must live with the resultant fallout: the alliances between planets have been shaken up; the Confluence has revealed its true contents; and instead of only ten lines that run spaceships, there are actually twelve.

Who knew some nobody from the slums of Lancia would end up being the instigator of amazing changes in space travel?
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Theo and Kay are newlyweds livings in Quebec while she spends the summer working as a performer at the cirque and he’s on sabbatical to finish a translation for a book. They’re a sweet couple, each with their own pursuits and personalities, but their relationship works.

And by the end of chapter 2 Kay has been turned into a puppet.
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When Henry Day was seven years old he was stolen by hobgoblins, one of their own changlings taking his place in the real world, while he joined the band of children living in the forest. They are both interlopers in their respective worlds, the real Henry Day now known as Aniday, and the changling Henry Day being raised by parents not his own, his parents long dead

Changling Henry Day was abducted 100 years previously, and spent the intervening years learning the ways of the hobgoblins, surviving the forest with eleven other children of various ages, waiting his turn until he could take the place of another child and return to the real world. As Henry Day grows up he is constantly reminded of his origins, while everyone around him is oblivious to his inner turmoil, his resentment that the hobgoblins have stolen his past. While another lives the life he should have, Aniday must learn the ways of the forest and how to survive among a band of wild children who are older than they look.
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There’s this unfortunate but sometimes entirely true analogy I’ve heard about how particular kids can be a kind of birth control for their parents. If the kid is especially difficult or energetic, they’ll entirely remove the desire of the parents to have another one anytime soon. Despite this, it is also true that time is the great eraser of memory, and after long enough even the trauma of those months and years can fade away and parents will find themselves diving back into the shark pond of parenthood once again. I found myself in a very similar state of mind, and yet completely cognizant of the decision that I was making, when I picked this book up. After all, I had been less than satisfied with the previous book in the series, but still I found myself wanting to read this next one. Thus, it came as no real surprise to me that it had been something like five years since THE WHITE-LUCK had been released, and I was able to uncheck the mental box that was pleading insanity and instead was able to chalk it up to good old memory loss given the ravages of time. And yet, once I got into the book, I found much of my same feelings about the previous book rushing back in to fill the supposed void of time. So much for memory loss.
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