Kathy Tyers, Shivering World

Shivering World

Kathy Tyers

Bethany House, March 2004, $12.99, 398 pp.

Earth is a wasteland because of the hole in the ozone layer allowing in the U.V. Rays. People live in domes and the wealthy live in space habitats. Terraforming of Mars and Venus has not been a complete success. The colonists of Goddard hire the Gaea Consortium to terraform the planet so they and their children will be able to live free of enclosed habitats. Dr. Graysha Brady Phillips works for Gaea because she needs the exorbitant salary to pay off her debts and she has heard rumors that they practice the outlawed science of genetic engineering.

Graysha's suffers from Flaherty's Syndrome and will die at the age of fifty as there is no cure. She hopes that the geneticist Goddard can fix her damaged chromosomes so she can have children that won't be carriers of the disease. Graysha's position is tenuous because her mother, as the head of the Eugenics Board, will carry out the law of irradiation and sterilization if the people of Goddard are practicing outlawed science on human beings. When Goddard is threatened Grashya does her best to find the solution that will save the place and people she now loves.

This science fiction story is both believable and plausible and readers will find themselves so immersed in the action of the characters that they will finish this book in one sitting. The audiences care deeply for the heroine who knows that she will die at a young age but live each day to its fullest and doesn't feel sorry for herself. Kathy Tyers is a talented writer who is a fantastic world builder in the tradition of Karen Hancock.

Harriet Klausner