Tia Cade enjoys her life moving from dig site to dig site and planet to planet with her archeologist parents. Precocious and inquisitive, she doesn’t mind that her best friend is a brainship or that she doesn’t get to spend time with other children her age. However, when an unknown space disease leaves her almost completely paralyzed, Tia gets a new lease on life as a brainship as well as a desire to track down the disease that she caught and make sure no else has to go through what she did.
This is my favorite of the brainship books, and the one I’ve read multiple times. I think it comes down to the fact that I enjoy Mercedes Lackey’s writing style more than Anne McCaffrey’s. The book has the tightest plot of the three brainship books, and it definitely has the best developed romance. Tia and Alex do a good job of balancing one another, and their character dynamic works very well. I also liked the fact that we got to see things like friendships between brainships and other shellpeople. Tia’s unique experiences make her something of a bridge between the two communities. I also appreciated the fact that the book is pretty realistic about what the bulk of archeology work actually is. There was more expansion of the world as well, and it capped off my reread of these books well. I am glad that I read this one last of the three because the other two books would have been a disappointment after this one. Four out of five stars.
