Crystal Line

Crystal Line Anne McCaffrey Date: 22 March, 1993   —   $6.29   —   Book product page Rating:

Fiction, Science Fiction

The hazard of crystal singing is that youur memory deteriorates over time. Killashandra is well into that segment of her life and the result is a fairly disjointed story that doesn't flow right. McCaffrey gives us a few events and they're supposed to have taken ten years? It doesn't quite match up, especially since she doesn't gloss over it in such a way that we could accept time passing (with a damaged memory.) Instead, we get "this happened, then this, then ten years had passed."

Of course, McCaffrey has always needed a better copy editor. Often she will transpose names or change spellings inadvertently (Trundimoux to Trundomoux, or Carigana to Carrigana), and in this case, she does some math so badly that no matter how I work it, I just can't get it to match the information in the previous novels. And yes, picky though it is, it does affect my enjoyment of the work.

This is the last of the three, and a decent recounting of certain events, but since we are seeing it through the perspective of a damaged memory, it feels very disjointed.