Subject: Anne McCaffery's "Crystal Line", reviews/spoilers

From: [email-masked] (Tim Tucker 817)
Date: 5 Oct 92 21:34:13 GMT

(*SPOILER ALERT*)

I just went out and read the latest addition to the "Crystal Singer" series over
the weekend and thought I would give some words of warning before too many other
people buy it.

McCaffery's (sp?) style has gotten worse since the original two Singer books.  It was pretty obvious that this one does not hold together as well as the first
two, and at times I wondered if maybe Anne is starting to lose it :-)

The problems:

   o The story wonders around too much.  At times she would make quick changes,
     and I had to back up and re-read to make certain that I was following along
     correctly.  This points to poor writing/editing, and it suprised me.

   o She has introduced a number of items from her other books into the "Singer"
     universe.  Most notable are from the "The Ship who Sang".  If you haven't
     read these other non-"Singer" books, you might start off a little confused
     since McCaffery doesn't spend much time explaining these new items.

   o The plot device used to restore "Killa's" memory was too out of character,
     occupied a large section of the book, and then seems to get dropped.  I
     didn't like this.  Unless she plans to continue the series with this new
     entity as a returning character, it was a big waste of time.

   o The story had great potential for character development, but it was skim-
     med over in favor of time spent with the liquid metal entity (yes, you
     heard right, shades to T2).  This is was disappointed me the most, since
     the relationship/character aspect was very strong in the "Singer" books.

My advice, wait for the paperback version...

Tim
[email-masked]
     and not