Reefsong by Carol Severance

Title: Reefsong
Author: Carol Severance
Format: Kindle and Paperback

I love water based fiction. There is so little of it. I first read reef song when I was in middle school. It was a book that I picked up at the library. It was also one of the books that catapulted me from Young Adult stuff into more intense, conflict and character driven science fiction.

I looked for this book for years. Finally, I went to a book forum and asked if anyone had ever heard of the story. It took about six posts before someone came up with the name. I did a search and to my amazement, it had been published a few months before on Kindle.

Reefsong is about a very driven woman who is pushed from one element into another. She has to deal with problems and she does it without spending excessive amounts of time bemoaning her own loss and change. She is not happy but that does not mean she is going to put aside her task and whine about life not being fair.

The main feel is colonial vs big company.

The cast is an interesting mesh of adult and juvenile. The evil people are evil and greedy and it is satisfying to see them loose. The science is fun and it works in the story. It is a very satisfying read.

Spoilers:

The main character is a forest ranger in the near future when there is not a lot of forest left. She is basically set up to be hurt and her life mortgaged to the big company that is the evil bad guy of the book, to go to this world and deal with their native population problem.

They want a genetic secret the planets population is hiding and expect her to give it over to them. Of course, because she is the hero and has a spine, she does not. It is interesting watching her make her decisions, figure out the people, and go to battle. She is not perfect but she is pretty much on the straight and narrow morally.

I love the book. I was happy to buy it.

Alien Emergencies: A Sector General Omnibus

Review May Contain Spoilers.

Title: Alien Emergencies: A Sector General Omnibus
Author : James White
Format: Amazon Kindle

I like older science fiction. It is interesting to see the speed of change that has changed our thoughts and habits when it comes to technology and discovery. I like how pure fiction was a few decades ago. Everyone came at everything with an individual attitude and not as many factors were consistent because the discovers that teach us consistency now had not yet been made.

I advise that if you are a purest who can only accept the most current technological fiction, don't read these.

If you like a good solid story with interesting characters and an interesting world and interesting ways of solving their problem, these stories are amazing. The situations and stories are fun, unique and a bit quirky. The author steps it up a notch by stepping out of normal comfort areas and speculating on other lifeforms. Methane, Crystal? Bring it all on.

That is what makes Sector General fun. The stories are short stories linked together. The characters are the same but it is not one great story that covers the entire book. It is a series of smaller stories that build up the world. Each is created and resolved but they do not end abruptly but build into the next story. The past is not forgotten and it causes the future to develop depth an consistency.

It is easy to care about the people. It is easy to care about the patients. You wish that you wanted to be a doctor because it seems to be the most interesting profession ever. It is healing instead of killing but it is just as potent and mind bending. The world isn't going to end but they do have to keep the hospital together, somehow.

It is worth the time to read it if you like world immersion and character driven story lines.