Softcover published BAEN August 2013. Reviewed by Steve Johnson.
Second in what may be a trilogy, or possibly a longer series ultimately. This goes back to the founder of Honor Harrington’s House and tells the story of Stephanie Harrington, first to bond with a Treecat. Lionheart saves her life, she saves his, and that’s it, bonded. The first book, A Beautiful Friendship was great, this one, while I felt it wasn’t quite so engrossing, was still very good, and that may be the usual trouble for the middle book of a trilogy. It’s the bridge between a smashing start, and an exciting finish. But it still did hold up very well even if read as a standalone. I didn’t like the cover however, it was too dark, too diffuse, the girl looks far older than the fourteen that Stephanie is, (more like 24) and Lionheart looks vicious as well as it not showing that he is hexepedal, a major part of the ecology. The story is good, with a strong ecological background dealing with the dangers of fire in forested lands, and how casual humans can be about fire precautions. At this end of the world we see that every fire season, not quite so much in New Zealand because our greener wetter bush doesn’t burn quite so well or so easily but in Australia where a high percentage of their wildfires are started by human halfwits. (Ours are too, it’s just that they are mostly less catastrophic.) But in Oz, some of the wildfires aren’t just massively destructive of wildlife, vegetation, and property, they kill people as well. And it’s that sort of wildfire that Stephanie and her friends battle in the book. The ‘people’ in danger being not only humans, but also a treecat clan directly in the path of one of the wildfires. There is a strong sub-plot of Stephanie’s problems with other teenagers of her own age, her growing interest in a newcomer, the newcomer’s father’s ignoring of necessary rules, and Stephanie finding that those she dislikes may still have redeeming features. It’s a good book all in all, but the cover really put me off. I see that it was done by the same artist who did Lyn McConchie’s The Duke’s Ballad, which cover I also really disliked. I hope either someone else does the cover for the next book, or the cover of the next is less drab and more accurate.