| $@%&! level: Low “Bedroom” level: Medium-High (it's not detailed, but it's a frequent topic) Violence level: Medium-Low (fun with space pirates) Back Cover: “It all began when Tia, a bright and spunky seven-year old accompanying her exo-archeologist parents on an EsKay dig, was afflicted by a mysterious neural disorder, one whose progressing symptoms finally permit her no life at all outside of some total mechanical support system. But like The Ship Who Sang, Tia won't be satisfied to glide through life like a ghost in a glorified wheelchair; like Helva, Tia is going to strap on a spaceship! But Tia has also set herself on a special mission: to seek out whatever it was on the EsKay planet that laid her low, to come to understand and then eliminate it—so that no other little girl will ever suffer the fate of The Ship Who Searched.” |
So, the general idea of the Brainship series is that people who are born with such intense birth defects that they could never live outside of complete life support—and who are otherwise perfectly intelligent and capable people—can be put into life support pods and cybernetically connected to (normally) a spaceship, which lets them have a sort of body again and gives them a useful way to spend their lives. That's the Brain. And they generally have a more mobile partner to take care of things that require a more human body. That's the Brawn.
That makes Tia rather unusual, because she was a perfectly ordinary child (aside from being remarkably intelligent) for seven years before she became a Brain. Which means that she's a bit more connected to the idea of a physical existence than most of the Brainships, and that possibly makes her more susceptible to falling in love. That's the real overall story here—and an excellent love story it is, too. Mercedes Lackey has this excellent talent of making her readers want something to happen...and then giving it to them, and I think that's her most important contribution to this book. Not that she didn't contribute a lot of other good stuff, but I can clearly see her hand in that aspect. The whole thing with finding the EsKay homeworld and all that—well, that's an excellent goal for Tia and Alex to share. And the adventures with pirates and wolves and zombies are all highly entertaining. But the real journey is the progress of their relationship to its eventual, inevitable conclusion. (Those who like the forbidden love kind of romance will be fascinated.)