Alien blood: Psion, Catspaw

by Joan D. Vinge

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B00071HVZO
• ISBN13: 9781114337046
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: Doubleday
• Length: 633 Pages
• Weight: 1.52 lbs.

Customer Reviews

great book(s)

This is a great book from begging to end. The characters are very well developed. The main characters `Cat,' is a deeply flawed person and the author dose a great job of showing that. The story held me the entire time, even through normally be the dull story building parts. I love the interactions between the characters, I think that is the meat of this book. The climax left me wanting something more, but then the whole book is full of great picks with few valleys. The people and events keep the tension that runs through out the book high and I really don't miss the classics single climax that completely ends the story-dead. Since it is really two books in one it is a great deal. I highly recommend this rook

Another intricate world from a favorite Sci Fi Author!

Before I begin into this review I will tell you that I read Catspaw (The second in this trilogy) first. Wholly hooked by Joan Vinge's intricate world, I HAD to go back and read the first. Psion is a really poignant introduction to poor Cat, young man for the life of him cannot catch a break. He is a street urchin for most of his years, unable to even remember the mother he was born to. He is a thief, a shill, and many other things that keep him alive, sometimes with out being beaten in the underground of Quarro. He is a half breed, half human, and half Hydran (only called that because the were found in Hydrae Centari). Hydrans are Psions by birth, able to perform feats that seem magic to dead head humans. Only they don't see it as magical, they see it as threatening. Add to that the hydrans are incapable of violence and it is easy to see why the Hydrans ended up at the losing end of the Human expansion across the universe. (If this sounds like a parallel to the early West, you are probably in the right). Cat's half-hydran geneaolgy has made him an outcast even amongst the dregs of the universe, and he doesn't even know why. After an arrest for one in a long line of offenses, Cat is brougth to the attention of an institute for Psion's human and otherwise. It is a break of a lifetime, even if Cat can't use the talent they insist he has. Eventually they break through to him, and his talent, fractured when he witnessed his mother's death, his talent dying with her. He only survived because of his human heritage. He finds that he is a good Psion, the best there is at reading minds. He and the others in the institute are approached by Quicksilver, a human Psion who is also a notorious criminal. Before Cat can join the team he is expelled from the project because of difficulties with the scientist running the program. That program was the one thing keeping him from servitude, and the contract laborers are quick to pick him up. He is sent to Cinder to work in the mines until he works off his sentence, or more likely until he dies. Quicksilver and the team is there as well, and the plot gets all the more twisted from there. Catspaw: After his adventures, Cat earns enough credits to put himself through the university, and all he wants is a normal life. If there is one thing I have learned about Cat's life is that what he wants is almost never what he gets! He is recruited to protect the TaMings, Elnear TaMing, who is to be selected for a place on the senate, if she can live through the assasination attempts. Cat, his gift burned out by his act to save the status Quo, is given it back, if only temporarily, to ensure that Elnear stays safe. This is quite a politically charged book set on Old Earth, where only the wealthiest families still live. Cat must find the assassin and foil a plot to ursurp the TaMings. Really an excellent read! Give it a go, you won't regret it!

Meet Cat....

This is actually a Trilogy with an extra story. Psion,Catspaw and Dreamfall. Alien Blood is Psion and Catspaw in one book. There is a short story in Phonix in the Ashes about Cat also.That being said this is a fantastic trilogy that I would love to see continued. Cat is a mixed breed psion that is thrust into a world he hates and doesn't want to understand. It is the story of the street tough tossed into the world of the rich-but that is only the baseline. Cat is an engaging character and the writing itself leaves you feeling like you are immersed in his world.These are books that because of slightly mature themes I would recommend for anyone 13-100.