The Ship Errant [Mass Market Paperback]

Perhaps one reason why McCaffrey afficianados consider "The Ship Errant" to be different from the usual "The Ship Who..." series, is that McCaffrey didn't write it. At least, she isn't given authorship credit although the book cover prominently displays the information that this is the sequel to a McCaffrey/Nye work ("The Ship Who Won"?)

Jody Lynn Nye, the only author credited here, seems to have a hard time making a storyline actually come to life. Although she is fully capable of writing a consumate stinker even WITH McCaffrey's help, this time she managed to groan out a solo novel which doesn't have quite enough originality to qualify as an extreme. This one is a confirmed denizen of "The Mediochre Middle".

Give the lady credit where due, tho. She has flights of whimsy which delight the reader ... this particular reader was even overheard chuckling a few times. Her description of frogs as Dungeons & Dragons-type adventurers was charming, and she tromped heavy-footed (if not quite heavy-handed) thru The Land of Puns. Some of us enjoy the trip more than others.

Her description of the budding love affair between Tall Eyebrows and Big Eyes is as almost as fun as her over-cooked naming convention: a frogish politician named Big Voice? Really!

Overdone, underplotted, characterizations which are nearly as deep as a frying pan, this is definately not destined to become a Fantasy Classic. But it's a good bedside reader, if only because it's so put-down-able.

It may not be Chicken Soup for the Soul, but perhaps Cotton Candy for the Mind.

Of the five books that have been written in the Brain & Brawn series by Anne McCaffrey and various co-authors, my favorite was "The Ship Who Won," the direct prequel to this title. So when I saw that co-author Jody-Lynn Nye had penned a solo follow-up, I naturally bought it. One critic says of it on the back cover that "Anne McCaffrey should be proud," and I'm sure she is.

Carialle, for those unfamiliar with the series, is a "brain"--a human being born so badly malformed that her only hope for survival was to be encased permanently in an artificial environment and trained to become the guiding force of a space station or (in her case) a spaceship--a Central Worlds explorer-craft whose mission is to "seek out new life and new civilizations," as Star Trek had it. After lengthy training, she chose a "brawn" (a normal person who could act as her arms and legs)--Keff, a romantic and amateur linguist with a weakness for holographic adventure games like Myths and Legends--and they set out on what will be a 25-year partnership. In the previous book, they discovered the planet Ozran, where two lost colonies--one human, one of the amphibioid Cridi--co-existed and shared a Cridi technology known as "Core" which permitted feats that would seem magical to nontechnological races. Now they have been assigned to carry a Cridi delegation home to their world of origin and invite the mother culture to become members of CW. What they didn't realize before they left Ozran was that the Cridi homeworld is close--literally painfully so--to a region of space where Carialle once suffered a catastrophic mishap which nearly destroyed her then ship-body, and was (or thinks she was) boarded and stripped by beings she was never able to identify. Upon re-entering that region, she suffers flashbacks which lead Inspector-General Maxwell-Corey to conclude that she is insane and should be removed not only from the mission but from service entirely. But Cari's not giving up without a fight, and neither is Keff. When the CW ship sent to relieve her is attacked by a pirate craft, they realize that Carialle's memories were accurate, and take off in pursuit of the pirates. Cridi friends old and new join their quest, which leads eventually to the discovery of yet another sapient race, the griffin-like Thelerie, and to Carialle's vindication when the pirate ringleader is captured.

What I liked best about this book were the Cridi and the Thelerie, two delightfully original and well-realized alien species. The Cridi, tiny but lionhearted creatures that resemble common Earth frogs, speak in both vocal and sign languages and have been struggling for 50 years to get their space program back on track, unaware that the reason for their zero success rate is that the pirates, lurking in the outer regions of their system, destroy every ship they launch. The Thelerie, who live in the neighboring solar system, are the innocent tools of the pirates (or Melange, as they call themselves), recruited for their unfailing ability to tell where they are in relation to their homeworld (and doubtless for the kind of innate grasp of piloting skill that would come naturally to a flying people); they also change sexes according to need, like the people in Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Left Hand of Darkness." Keff and Cari's skillful and compassionate campaign to demonstrate their error to them, help them make friends with the Cridi and vindicate themselves by helping in the defeat of the Melange show clearly how well these partners have learned their lessons and how smoothly they work together. This is a quick-moving tale of first contact and space-opera adventure that should appeal to all lovers of sf.

I read this book because I wanted to finish the some of the story left open in "The Ship Who Won" (TSWW) written by Anne McCaffery and co-written by Jody Lynn Nye. This is the first story that I have read which was solely written by Jody Lynn Nye and I'm not sure that I would come back for more.

It is nice to have some of the final pieces to the puzzle of what happened to Carialle as she drifted through space in TSWW but it was a little thin in plot. Carialle and Keff take the "globe-frogs" from TSWW back to their home world and end up going on a new mission. . . meeting another alien race and uncovering a band of pirates in the process. I felt this story could have been told with the same level of depth in a book half as long as this.

Jody doesn't seem to have the flow of thought that Anne has either. The story would deal with one issue and then abruptly switch to another issue making me wonder why some passages were included at all. I had a hard time getting into it at first too because it seems to have started out a bit slowly. The ending to the story was a little predictable too and left me a little unsatisfied. Additionally, through-out the book I got the feeling that Jody was trying too hard to be a good writer. She seemed to make up some words and had trouble with wording, making concepts harder to understand. I never felt like I got a clear picture of what the Thelerie species looks like either.

It is worth the read through though if you want to complete the story from "The Ship Who Won" but it probably won't rate as one of the best books you've ever read.