book was absolutely what I needed to read in this moment, Between all that has been going on at home, in the nation and in the world, I needed a book with a heroine beyond compare, a hero who did the right thing even when afraid, and a happy ending.
Some tense moments, BUT no betrayals, no backstabbing, no treachery, thank goodness! So it getsfor being the right book at the right time, I love Anne McCaffreys books amp this was a fabulous read that I couldnt put down,
Synopsis
A tale of courage and adventure, set in the same universe as “The Ship Who Sang”, A precocious sevenyearold girl has been afflicted by a paralyzing alien virus, and cannot survive outside a mechanical support system, She straps on a spaceship and sets out to find what it was that laid her low,
Two of my very favorite authors, and for me the best book in the series, There is so little really good YA science fiction out there, and this book is one of the best, Tia's story is just heartbreaking and inspiring all at once, It's also possible that I'm biased because I have a Very Special Teddy Bear of my own, One of my favorite books of all time, and one I can easily read over and over! This is my favorite of all the brainship books, I love the characters and the story, . . it is just wonderful! A young woman becomes paralyzed and must become a brainshipand find her Brawn, her human soul mate, so that she can discover a cure for her illness.
Tia Cade is a headstrong, smart, and very normal girl until she contracts a terrible illness that leaves her with the bare semblance of life.
Tia's only hope: to become the oldest person ever to train to be one of the legendary star travelers, the brainships, But now that Tia is free of her ravaged body, there still remains the task of finding the right partner to be her Brawn, the human element every brainship requires.
And when the disease that debilitated Tia threatens thousands more, selecting a Brawn who is her true soul mate may allow Tia to find the origin of the terrible plagueand perhaps even a cure.
A long time ago I found a collection of Anne McCaffrey which comprised 'restoree', 'decision at doona' and 'the ship who sang', This last book introduced us to the idea of people who were highly disabled being enabled by forming the 'brain' of a spaceship, The concept was fascinating: a synthesis of organic and mechanical life that allowed highly intelligent people to reach the, This book, 'the ship who searched', takes the concept further: rather than being paralysed from birth Tia catches an alien virus which robs her of mobility, Predictable story Yes, somewhat, but McCaffrey's writing taking us inside heads, examining motivations, her lovely slightly sarcastic tone on occasion is delightful,
As an example of character writing, this is great, As a plot it's a bit lazy on occasion, The ship who searched is about the brain ship Hypatia, or Tia, She is an exceptional brain ship, because she was quite old when she became a shell person:, She is interested in archeology and finds a brawn who is interested in the same, Together they get into a few scrapes, . .
The book was written in typical McCaffrey style, not overemotional, but compelling nonetheless, I love this world with people who become ships and I like seeing how they interact with the world, The story itself is not overly brilliant, it is more a collection of adventures that show off the world, much like the first book, Only in this book, the adventures are more connected, I thought the ending was a bit too happy, but other than that, this was a very nice book, This is a reread for me, and it's my favourite of the Brainship series,
I absolutely fell in love with Tia when I first read the book as a young teen, and her brawn Alexander is absolutely delightful, I love the relationship between the two of them, as they work together to thwart plagues, pirates, and other potential disasters,
I highly recommend this book! Perhaps not quitebut pretty close, Tia is an unusually well adjusted brightyear old, Fortunately, since she is about to have a life altering horrendous neural disease that ends her in a shell person and a brain ship, Having learned from watching a friend of hers, she is extremely picky about who becomes her brawn, Has she made the right choice in career and brawn Read to find out!
This lost a star by leaving some important points completely unfinished.
One minute Tia and Alex the brawn are feeling very sorry for a guy named Hank who likely has a nastier disease than Tia did and are checking out a planet to see if the plague Hank has is from there.
Then we never hear of Hank again, For that matter we never get a resolution for the baddies trying to attack Tia, Then we all of a sudden are out of space in a pricey yet ordinary boardroom, Finally we jump to the brainship which is very ominously empty of Tia, Ill admit the ending is nice and romantic but Im not so convinced it is the logical ending to the story, The ending almost belongs in another book, But I couldnt put the book down, Tia is a very sweet person and youre cheering for her all the way, It deserves thein spite of the plot holes, Another lovely story about two souls meeting and falling perfectly for each other,
There's no real 'bad guy' in this one, Just a string of adventures and a happy ending for a child who, at one point, thought it was all over before she'd even begun,
I'd be happy to continue on with Tia and Alex to find the EsKays,
Overall, a good edition to the Brain and Brawn series,.out ofstars. This has to be even better than the Ship Who Sings, for me,
Hypatia Cade, known as Tia to her friends, is theyear old daughter of a couple of archeologists, and she lives with them at their Esk Dig.
Tia is an extremely bright, and emotionally stable child, and her best friend is a Brainship called Moira who, on visiting the Site just after Tia's birthday, gifts her with a wonderfully soft, blue bear, who is dressed in a Courier Service uniform.
Soon after Moira and her Brawn go off on their rounds of Digs again, Tia finds a junk site that she feels belongs with the Esk site that her parents are studying and, in order to save time, she collects a couple of samples, although one crumbles as she tries to move it, and she breathes in some of the dust.
A few weeks later, Tia has trouble with her feet, as they first start feeling prickly, and then slowly go numb, Because she doesn't want to disturb her parents in their important work, she consults the Medtech box in the site but, because she didn't know what had caused the problem, she didn't tell the Medtech, and it assumed she was going through a growth spurt.
As time goes on, and because her parents were working so many more long hours, that she didn't want to disturb them, it got to the point where her hands went numb too, and then the numbness crept up her legs and arms.
It was only because her parents had a day off, and she stumbled in front of them, that they realised there was a problem, and so Tia was shipped out to a Central Worlds hospital where, eventually, whatever had caused her problem was stopped but not before she was numb to her neck, and had become a quadriplegic.
Her Consultant, Doctor Kenny, who is a paraplegic disabled through an accident gets his friend, Lars, the Central Worlds Medstation Brain, to help him recommend Tia to the Shell programme, as her mind was still perfectly clear, and he hated the thought of her being stuck in a room for the rest of whatever life she might have left.
He knew that, if she were accepted as a Shellperson, she would have many, many more decades of life to live, with the choice of any job that she fancied.
Through Kenny and Lars' insistence, and Tia's natural character, even despite her age, she is accepted in to the programme and, on her graduation, accepts a job as a Brainship, to the Archeology and Exploration Service
that her parents worked for.
She was fitted as a Brainship, to work for A and E as a Courier Ship, just as her friend Moira was,
From then on, Tia chooses her Brawn, a man called Alexander, who was also an archeology buff, and their service life together begins,
They have many adventures, and discover many things, and the rest of the book tells all that happens to them, with all the same gentle humour, and love of people, that both Anne McCaffrey, and Mercedes Lackey, are capable of showing in their writing.
The fact that it's two of my most favourite of authors writing together, is definitely a bonus for me, And I both laughed, and also shed many a tear, in its reading,
Totally unputdownable! If you finish a book in little over two days, I think there's no need to expound on how you found it, I rarely read sci fi, Thanks to Fiona for recommending it, Actually I picked it up because I wanted to write about women and technology conflict, This was perfect for my purpose but sadly I forgot about writing and became immersed in reading which says much about the readability of the work, I would have liked a more definite conclusion as far as the quest was concerned but since this is a series, maybe that was deliberately left loose.
Otherwise, the central characters take the day and make it an engrossing book, Another fabulous story in the Brain Ship series, I would say this one was better again, again, I loved the characters, I loved their relationships and interactions, I thought the story was enjoyable and captivating,
I did like the ending, There seems to be a bit of a Brain and Brawn boundary pushing in these novels and I thought this one probably handled it best, . . so far. I'm ready to see where the next story takes us, This is so good. Tia is an amazing character, and IMO this is the best of the series after the Helva tales, Makes me really wish that McCaffrey had written or collaborated on many more of these stories, I gave this onebecause of the ending mentioned in spoiler tags below, Up until the ending, I was wavering betweenandstars,
It is hard to get used to these books as full length novels, after reading sitelinkThe Ship Who Sang, which was a collection of short stories about one particular Brainship.
But it was well done as a novel, employing multiple plotlines and mysteries to great effect as the Brainship and her Brawn explore the Universe, I liked the main character in this one, Tia, as her background is interesting and her story allowed for a lot of discussion of disability and the treatment of the differently abled.
She was a strong female character because of her science background and the use of her intelligence to move the plot forward,
The ending was a big disappointment for me, because I thought it undermined a lot of the themes that were being built during the course of the book.
It was almost like the authors had this interesting plot idea, and they figured they would throw it in at the end even though it didn't fit with the characters in this story.
I thought it was a cheap gimmick, .