Tower and the Hive series #4

The pursuit of the Hives continues with a larger number of the Lyon/Gwyn/Raven clan recruited.The human and Mrdini allies work together-mostly- to find a way to defeat Hive ships. Parts of this one are kind of slow and there is a focus on the military in this one. It is a bridge between Damia's Children and the next book and does not really stand on it's own in any way. ( )

This book felt like a filler installment. Sure some things happened, mostly in the research on Hivers, but otherwise progress was slow, and the end just dragged more and more.

The attempts at matchmaking throughout the book just feel so forced and gross.

The constant introduction of women focusing on their appearances are totally unnecessary given we don't usually get the same for men, and all characters' competencies speak for themselves.

There appear to be some discrepancies in continuity, unless my memory is going haywire. The first few books included coffee, but in this one suddenly the "stimulant" drinks of choice are peppers, which appear in other of McCaffrey's series. Zara's character bounces around confusingly from refusing to hunt animals for food in the previous book to discussing how she's been hunting since childhood in this one, and from feeling sympathy/nonviolence for Hivers on some pages to wanting to eradicate them all on other pages.

The whole thing with Rojer's 'Dinis being cloned wasn't explained well enough. Do they have the memories of the killed pair? If not, they...aren't really Rojer's 'Dinis returned, and it felt like a cop-out narratively.

The series sees its first gay character in Kincaid, and while the characters are surface-level accepting, his treatment rings the warning bells of LGBT rep: a literal quote about him doing whatever he wants in his "private life" since he's so good at his job it "doesn't matter" (an odd assessment given how much straight relationships are focused on without connecting them to their work productivity); the only character to have experienced relationship trauma that he continually struggles to heal from; and the only character to have been in a poly relationship (which was, of course, the toxic one). His character isn't at the forefront of the overall story, but his treatment is so problematic. ( )

Anne McCaffrey is one of my all time favorite sc-fi/fantasy authors. Her 'The Tower and the Hive" series is among my favorite series of all time. The characters are engaging and the story grabs me right about and keeps me interested until the very end. I do feel that story gets a weak towards the middle but it picks up at the end. I definitely enjoy some of the families story lines better than others. ( )

To read more reviews from this author and others, check out my blog at keikii Eats Books!

81 points, 4 ¼ stars!

Quote:

“It must be an amazing mind-set, Afra thought, to consider one’s self the only being of worth in the galaxy. There had been Humans who had had such delusions. They had generally died because of them”

Review:
Lyon's Pride is the continuation of the story from the previous book, Damia's Children. It picks up exactly where the last book left off. Probably because the previous book just arbitrarily ended when it got to the proper word count and left the rest for this book.

This just had an amazingly slow start. Honestly, not much of note happened in the first SIXTY PERCENT of the book. It felt like I was just spinning around, waiting for something to actually happen. We kept covering over old ground and posing as if it was new ground. I was bored. I want to love these kids so much, but I am just dreadfully bored by them.

Ostensibly this is supposed to be dealing with the Hive. The Humans and Dini have to find out more information about the Hive. And they have to figure out what they are going to do when they find it. Both races have tried to communicate with the Hive, but the Hive don't even appear to notice other beings exist.

What Lyon's Pride is really about is managing resources and personnel. So much talking about who goes where, who ships what, how to ship what. It's so boring. It is also about arranging love interests, which personally I find cute but am growing a bit tired of after the second book in a row of this. Also it is about giving the kids some time off. A lot of talking about the kids having vacation time. So much book time.

Also holy hell they're drafting like 12 year olds into work now. What the crap, man. I thought it was bad when before. The kids would hit 16 and FT&T is like "welp, guess you're an adult now, time to have a whole shitload of responsibility and almost no time off!" Nope. Twelve year olds now. This is crazy. How much younger are they going to force these kids to work in the future??

Lyon's Pride kind of turned into a military space opera by the end. Which I kind of liked. However, this also had the same problem as the previous book. The book just kind of ends at the appropriate word count. No resolutions, no climax. It just..stops. ( )

Excellent read, adventurous, lots of charismatic characters, progression of history , only one more book to go, I shall be sorry to come to the end of this series. ( )