If you liked the CITY WHO FOUGHT - 3 stars if you only know the rest

books:


	• The Ship Avenged (Brainship) S.M. Stirling Baen, 1998 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 14 reviews view larger image
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Not a bad read, but...

I really enjoyed "The City Who Fought", especially the character of Joat, so I was thrilled when I finally found out there was a sequel. Well...it was all right. Not bad, not great, certainly not what it could have been. All the right moves were made in the beginning to set up a truly fascinating read, but it just never came together. The end of the book is riddled with plotholes and dangling plot lines that the author tried to tie up neatly at the end, but just...didn't. It wasn't just that the romance felt horribly contrived, but ALL the character relationships towards the end started feeling like actors reading lines that didn't quite add up. And unfortunately, some of the most important action of all was glossed over by an "overview" last chapter that left me screaming. The book would've benefitted from an extra fifty pages or so to tie up all the complications that were brought in at the last minute.

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The Ship Avenged (although not really a brainship)

This is NOT a brain ship story.

If you like McCaffrey, you'll read and like it well enough. However, when I first read it, I thought it was a CHEAT.

All the previous brainships were human minds and the stories related to the ship as protagonist. This ship is simply an artificial intelligence used to fake a brain brawn story with Joat, a character introduced in an earlier book.

Joat is the main character and the story is ok, but I'd have liked it better if this had been about some way of getting Joat into a real brain/brawn relationship in spite of impossible odds.

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If you liked the CITY WHO FOUGHT - 3 stars if you only know the rest

of the Brainship series but definitely don't start here.

The action picks up about ten years after THE CITY WHO FOUGHT and features Joat Simeon-Happ and a few other characters from that book. Joat now has her own ship and crew and is approached by Central Worlds Security to locate the Kolnari space raiders - also involved in THE CITY WHO FOUGHT. Joat and crew soon find themselves in far over their heads as they attempt to rescue a kidnapped planetary leader and prophet (who also happens to have ties to Joat and her crew). As always in this series the good guys triumph but only after many horrific adventures.

This, like the rest of the Brainship series, is listed as a 'Young Adult' book but in my opinion it is for the more mature end of that audience due to the implied sexual situations, strong scenes of violence and gruesome situations. This is definitely the weakest book in the series that I have read so far. Unless you are a fan of THE CITY WHO FOUGHT skip this one.

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The Jack of All Trades grows up

In this authorized sequel to McCaffrey & Stirling's "The City Who Fought," it's 10 years since the barbarian spacegoing raiders the Kolnari captured Space Station SSS-900-C and were sent scurrying with tails between legs by Simeon, the Brain that runs it, and Joat, the 11-year-old technodemon who lurked in its conduits. In gratitude, Simeon and his Brawn, Stationmaster Channa Hap, adopted Joat and saw that she received an education. Now Joat is out on her own, a dropout from Brawn school with a small ship called "WYAL" (for While You Ain't Lookin') and her very own AI, Rand, who, while not a Brain, functions almost as well as one.

Unfortunately the Kolnari have neither forgotten nor forgiven their defeat, and their warlord, Belazir t'Marid, has succeeded in acquiring a virus that attacks the cognitive centers of the brain and, in effect, brings on a kind of artificial Alzheimer's Disease. To spread it, he must create a human carrier, then return that carrier to his own planet and wait for the virus to do its work. The carrier he selects is Amos bin Sierra Nueva, Prophet and leader of the religiously-oriented colony world of Bethel, which played a major role in the Kolnari defeat a decade before. So that Amos can't warn his people of his state, Belazir injects him with a paralyzing agent and advertises, through his underground contacts, for a free ship to carry his "package" home. The "WYAL"--which, unknown to Belazir, has been hired by Central Worlds master spy Bros Sperin to look into the man Belazir uses as a contact and fence--responds, and in short order the fate of Bethel, Station Simeon, and much of the civilized Galaxy hangs on Joat, Rand, Sperin, a Sondee scientist named Seg !T'sel, Joat's one crewmember Alvec, and Amos's close friend and head of security, Joseph.

Anyone who liked Han Solo should be pleased to make the acquaintance of the adult Joat, who is just as shifty and morally ambiguous as the world's most famous Corellian and even better with techie toys. And the Kolnari, like the Imperials who were Solo's bugaboo, are a race of villains you love to hate--utterly evil, yet in a way comprehensible. Seg the Sondee--a romantic with James-Bondworthy dreams of the glamor of espionage, "working on an opera in his spare time" (as practically every Sondee is), and a highly skilled medic and computerman--is another great original character. Though the romantic attraction between Bros and Joat seems rather forced, the story itself is convoluted and fast-moving, with lots of military throwaway such as might be expected from Stirling. A good entry into the Brain & Brawn series.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3