Typhon's Children

by Ann Tonsor Zeddies and Toni Anzetti

To the new colonists, the teeming, ocean-dominated planet of Typhon seems a wondrous and exotic paradise--until the land erupts with incomprehensible violence, consuming the colony in a fiery hell.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345418719
• ISBN13: 9780345418715
• Release Date: October 1999
• Publisher: Del Rey Books
• Length: 329 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 4.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Currents of Water and Ideas

What a great book!It's not very often you get a science fiction story based on biology and genetics, and when you do, it's not often done well. But not only does Anzetti really seem to know her science, she has a great hand with characters and plotting. And the water world Typhon seems very real. You can almost smell the ocean, and feel the currents on your body.There are currents on land, too, as the remnants of the colonists struggle with the decisions they have to face about survival and the fate of their children. The children are also interesting characters, each of them a real person, and more than the handicap or deformity Typhon has cursed them with.The deaf girl Delani was the person I most identified with. Her handicap made her frustrated, but she kept on pushing through, and not always in a nice way! I know I've felt trapped like her sometimes in my life, and you just have to do whatever you have to, to make things right. She was very realistic, and admirable.Per, the scientist, was good, too, strong and complicated. There's a mystery behind him, and I hope we learn more about him in future books. It's clear that Anzetti is planning a sequel, and I look forward to it. I won't give the ending away, but I thought that the second half of the book, with the solution to Typhon's problem was exciting and intelligent. It was one of those stories where the ideas just keep getting bigger and bigger.I would recommend this book to anyone!

Typhon's Children

I loved it. I think it's brilliant. Engaging characters & great ideas... an excellent read! Toni Anzetti has created species with ancient, alien, and vibrant cultures that are both beyond the ability of humans to understand and completely accessible to readers... all presented through complex and engrossing characters.It's one of those rare books that changes the way I see and think about things for long after I've finished reading it.I hope this is just the start of a long series.Buy it and read it. You'll see what I mean.

Hugo, Nebula, Campbell award - or all 3?

Wow! How about a contender for the Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell awards? "Typhon's Children" impressed me... a lot. The science fiction books and stories that make such a large favorable impresson on me are few and far between. "Lord of Light", "The Stars My Destination", "No Woman Born", "There Will Be Time", and "Tau Zero" all come to mind.Toni Anzetti's (apparent) debut is not about anything in any of those books, but her story of the failed colony from cold, dark, dry Skandia and their fate on the warm, wet, world of Typhon is comparable to them in impact and quality. It ranks as good, hard, science fiction without any expository digressions (thank you, Toni), a real plot, and characters and character development that most authors would kill for. She throws you in the deep end, hands you a skinsuit and a dive-mask, attacks you with tangleweed, a pod of ketos and a school of boogers and leaves you gasping (literally) and near death. And that's just the first scene. The colonists are near the end of their rope: disaster-struck, impoverished, apparently abandoned, dejected, gene-damaged, dying-out, combative, and neurotic. Then things get worse.READ THIS BOOK!

Read this incredible book about the strange births.

This is an awesome book that grabbed my attention everytime I read a chapter. The Author puts you on a joy ride in to the deep of the ocean to the peeks of the volcano's of the Typhon Planet. This planet has an island surrounded by complete ocean, just like Hawaii. Then one day an unexpected eruption occured, which destroyed most of the planets supplies and they are now suffering from defects on birth. This is something very mysterious, and it creeped me out. The story will never end until everything is back to normal or they can find a way out of the planet. You should pick up this book like me, if you are interested in the types of books that related to extraterestial life. This book can become funny sometimes but it is mostly serious and suspenceful. I really enjoyed reading this book at night because it keeps you from sleeping and keeps you reading to the end. I would recomend this book to all the wonderers out there who is dying to read about alienation that will occurs in every planet in life sometimes.

A dazzling start to a great new series!

I would echo the comments of the reviewer who likened this book to the Pern adventures of Anne McCaffery, and propose another comparison. While reading Typhon's Children, I was reminded of the early novels of Andre Norton and their tantalizing evocations of ancient alien civilizations. Add in scrupulously researched scientific details, fast-paced adventure, and an otherworldly environment so convincingly portrayed that you can taste the salt on the breeze, and you come close to describing a visit to the planet Typhon. The characters are complex, living and breathing (whether out of the water or in it) beings whose triumphs and setbacks the reader comes to care about deeply. The humans who inhabit this world are by turns noble, stubborn, amusing and heartbreaking, while the non-humans they encounter over the course of the novel are delineated with equal depth and compassion.If one definition of a good book is that it leaves the reader wanting more, then I'd vote Typhon's Children a place on that honored shelf. This is one of the few books I've read in more years than I'd care to admit where I found myself consciously slowing down as I neared the ending, wanting to draw out my visit to this wonderful world for as long as I possibly could!P.S. According to the latest Del Rey newsletter, Toni Anzetti has just handed in Riders of Leviathan, the second book in the Typhon series.