About the Author

Anne McCaffrey, one of the world’s most popular authors, is best known for her Dragonriders of Pern® series. She was the first woman to win the two top prizes for science fiction writing, the Hugo and Nebula awards. She was also given the American Library Association’s Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement in Young Adult Fiction, was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and was named a Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1926, McCaffrey relocated to Ireland in the 1970s, where she lived in a house of her own design, named Dragonhold-Underhill. She died in 2011.

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, winner of the Nebula Award for her novel The Healer’s War, is the author of numerous fantasy novels. She has co-authored twelve novels with Anne McCaffrey. She lives on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.

Reviews

This final volume of the trilogy that began with Powers That Be opens with the marriage of Yanaba Maddock, administrator of the sentient planet Petaybee, to geneticist and selkie Sean Shongili. The pregnant Yana soon has to travel off-world to defend Petaybee's interests before a skeptical galaxy, leaving the planet open to devious exploitation by such predators as old enemy Torkel Fiske. The narrative shifts focus between the primitive but honest planet and the glittering space city of Gal Three as travails mount at both locations. Yana and two young friends are kidnapped by pirate Onidi Louchard; pilgrims and treasure seekers flood Petaybe. Throughout, the story oozes with the same sentimentality and one-dimensional characterization that afflicted the previous volumes. McCaffrey and Scarborough are capable of better, jointly as well as individually. (July)