Grounded!
Grounded! is the sequel to Chris Claremont's Firstflight, which I have reviewed previously.
From Publisher's Weekly, "Claremont is still obviously inspired by Vonda N. McIntyre and C. J. Cherryh, but this time around he avoids slavish imitation. This new offering sees Lt. Nicole Shea, her certification to fly in space revoked after the stressful events of FirstFlight, working on the first joint spacecraft-building effort between humans and the alien Halyan't'a (yet another feline species)."
I wouldn't know about McIntyre or Cherryh, or even X-Men. In this book, while the grounded Nicole is now working on relations between humans and aliens, she learns about a previous (later repeated) assassination attempt on her life which is linked to an attempt on the president and on human-alien relations. She makes some new friends who might also be out to get her, a couple of very spoiled kids who are the children of Manuel Cobri, the guy who put the Faster Than Light theory to use.
Many of my complaints about this book were just present in the first half or so; they made more sense later. For example, Amy Cobri is a precocious child, a rich girl (early teens) who is smart and who always gets her way because of her family's position. She's annoying as fuck and I didn't understand why Nicole didn't kick Amy in the teeth every other page.
The aliens were somewhat annoying in that they were this weird stereotype of noble, almost mystical beings with elaborate rituals who adopted Nicole into their family. It was dorky and a little boring.
Alex, the other Cobri child, this one a young man, is also rich and spoiled, but Nicole soon becomes attracted to him. This, too, is annoying. Alex is a mastermind in virtual reality type technology and Nicole works with him, though they have a few clashes.
These annoyances, however, disappear towards the end of the novel. Both Amy and Alex begin to make sense, and their faults begin to drag them down. It works pretty well, pretty realistically, and I like how Nicole finally deals with them.
The aliens are also a bit better. In the end of the novel, I suddenly felt a bit of relief that Nicole had another family to go to.
One annoyance that is present in the very beginning in the novel and doesn't get any better is the ... technobabble, or whatever it is. I wouldn't really know. In the beginning of the novel, Nicole is flying an airplane. She loves planes. Something apparently hits her plane and she does all sorts of things to keep it from going out of control, from blowing up or whatever, and safely landing. All sorts of things. They make no sense. I don't know if I learned anything from reading this stuff, but I sure didn't become an aviation mechanic from it, and I think I'd have to be to understand this stuff. How much of it was accurate I have no idea, but I hope that the next book doesn't have this problem.
This book did not suffer from contrived sex plots like the first book did, and that is a huge relief, while it still showed some of Nicole's sexual side. On the other hand, this second book was considerably slower, less action, less CLEAR action, and being bored is about as bad as being offended. Sometimes worse.
Still, I think the book was worth the read, and I'll read the last book, Sundowner.
From Publisher's Weekly, "Claremont is still obviously inspired by Vonda N. McIntyre and C. J. Cherryh, but this time around he avoids slavish imitation. This new offering sees Lt. Nicole Shea, her certification to fly in space revoked after the stressful events of FirstFlight, working on the first joint spacecraft-building effort between humans and the alien Halyan't'a (yet another feline species)."
I wouldn't know about McIntyre or Cherryh, or even X-Men. In this book, while the grounded Nicole is now working on relations between humans and aliens, she learns about a previous (later repeated) assassination attempt on her life which is linked to an attempt on the president and on human-alien relations. She makes some new friends who might also be out to get her, a couple of very spoiled kids who are the children of Manuel Cobri, the guy who put the Faster Than Light theory to use.
Many of my complaints about this book were just present in the first half or so; they made more sense later. For example, Amy Cobri is a precocious child, a rich girl (early teens) who is smart and who always gets her way because of her family's position. She's annoying as fuck and I didn't understand why Nicole didn't kick Amy in the teeth every other page.
The aliens were somewhat annoying in that they were this weird stereotype of noble, almost mystical beings with elaborate rituals who adopted Nicole into their family. It was dorky and a little boring.
Alex, the other Cobri child, this one a young man, is also rich and spoiled, but Nicole soon becomes attracted to him. This, too, is annoying. Alex is a mastermind in virtual reality type technology and Nicole works with him, though they have a few clashes.
These annoyances, however, disappear towards the end of the novel. Both Amy and Alex begin to make sense, and their faults begin to drag them down. It works pretty well, pretty realistically, and I like how Nicole finally deals with them.
The aliens are also a bit better. In the end of the novel, I suddenly felt a bit of relief that Nicole had another family to go to.
One annoyance that is present in the very beginning in the novel and doesn't get any better is the ... technobabble, or whatever it is. I wouldn't really know. In the beginning of the novel, Nicole is flying an airplane. She loves planes. Something apparently hits her plane and she does all sorts of things to keep it from going out of control, from blowing up or whatever, and safely landing. All sorts of things. They make no sense. I don't know if I learned anything from reading this stuff, but I sure didn't become an aviation mechanic from it, and I think I'd have to be to understand this stuff. How much of it was accurate I have no idea, but I hope that the next book doesn't have this problem.
This book did not suffer from contrived sex plots like the first book did, and that is a huge relief, while it still showed some of Nicole's sexual side. On the other hand, this second book was considerably slower, less action, less CLEAR action, and being bored is about as bad as being offended. Sometimes worse.
Still, I think the book was worth the read, and I'll read the last book, Sundowner.