Subject: Prograde Reviews--Tara K. Harper:Lightwing

From: [email-masked] (Humphrey Aaron V)
Date: 19 Mar 94 20:20:39 GMT

Tara K. Harper: Lightwing

A Prograde Review by Aaron V. Humphrey  [some spoilers]

Tara K. Harper, says her bio at the back, has a Bachelor of Science degree,
has worked in "the electronics and computer test-and-measurement field",
and tries to keep up with the fields of genetics, biophysics, physics and
space exploration.  That kind of scientific background certainly shows up
in _Lightwing_.

That said, I'm not sure that this is hard SF, though I'm a bit fuzzy at
what qualifies a book for that subgenre, not having read as much Analog as
I might have.  Most of the main characters in the book are scientists and
engineers, trying to crack the secret of the FTL drive, and I often found
myself bewildered by the technical jargon flying around--mainly because the
author made it up herself, ESP and FTL not being fields I'm up on.  In the
latter, particularly, despite my passing familiarity with relativity
physics, I often had little clue what she was referring to.  But this _is_
future tech, right?

Oh, yes, the ESP bit.  Well, there's more than one alien race floating
around, and a fair number of strains of mutated human stock(usually called
H'Mus), including the protagonist, Kiondili Wae.  Several of the aliens and
many of the H'Mus have ESP abilities to a greater or lesser degree; these
abilities also have their technical uses, being somehow able to interact
with and control "fields".

Kiondili Wae, a H'Mu ESPer with a bit of a chip on her shoulder and tragedy
in her past, gets transferred to Corson Station, where she immediately gets
into trouble and makes enemies.  There's more than a bit of professional
rivalry, lots of technical problems, and Wae's emotional problems cause
their fair share of trouble too.

The aliens are well-drawn.  We really only get one sample of each type,
except for the H'Mus, but they're all interesting--the Ixia, a carnivorous
race who instinctively pounce on weakness(sometimes literally); the Moal,
whose musical communications remind me somewhat of Cherryh's tc'a(who spoke
in matrices); the Ruvians, who are H'Mus so far removed as to no longer
have a constant physical form, or sexuality; the Dhirrnu, practical jokers
with racial memory; and others only sketched out.  I can't help wondering
if Harper has written/ will write more books in this universe...

For those who like to quantify these things, I'll give it a 7/10.  The last
half of the book really pulled me along, and the characterization is good.

%A Harper, Tara K.
%T Lightwing
%I Ballantine del Rey
%C New York
%D July 1992
%G 0-345-37161-5
%P 261 pp.
%O Paperback, US $4.99, Can $5.99

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