Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Deluge

Deluge

Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Del Rey, March 2008, $23.95

ISBN 9780345470065

On the sentient planet Petaybee, the Company Corps has made a serendipitous landing, hoping to catch the natives off guard so they can round them up easily and send them to the prison planet Gwinnet. They arrive to find an empty village, the inhabitants hiding in the communal cave where they speak to Petaybee. The Corps is trapped in their ship by a terrific storm the planet sent their way.

The Selkie twins Ronan and Muriel have convinced the ship changing aliens who usually take the form of sea otters, to use their city-ship and take them to Versatile Station owned by their influential friend Marmie. She has been sent to the Gwinnet prison planet by corrupt officials bringing false charges against her. The twins want to contact Marmie's influential friends to talk to them about her imprisonment and the invasion of Petaybee. They can't use Petaybee's com because of bad weather conditions. They reach the station ahead of the Corps and they send a message just before the Corps takes over. They and the inhabitants of the station are taken to Gwinnet where the twins old enemy professor Mabo is waiting to conduct painful experiments on them to figure out how they change into seals when in water

DELUGE wraps up the Twins of Petaybee trilogy and all the questions are answered and all the loose ends are sewn up. Readers will thoroughly enjoy this fantastic space opera with its fast pacing, action scenes and the interaction of humans and shape-shifting life sentient aliens. There are plenty of villains from corrupt prison officials to power hungry men and women of the Company Corps to a mad professor; readers will thoroughly enjoy the tale in hope they get what they deserve, especially those that are irredeemable.

Harriet Klausner