Power Play by Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Title:  Power Play
Author:  Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
Pages:  233
Genre:  Science Fiction
Publisher:  Del Rey, 1995
Series:  Petaybee, Book 3

Synopsis: Petaybee was growing up. Day by day, the sentient planet--like any child--was learning to recognize and understand the meaning of outside stimuli, to respond to those stimuli, to communicate its own needs and desires...even to use human speech.

Then some of Petaybee's staunchest champions--Yanaba Maddock, Marmion de Revers Algemeine, Bunny Rourke, and Diego Metaxos--were kidnapped. The perpetrators wanted Petaybee for its incredible mineral wealth. Their other attempts at plundering the planet had all failed, and now they were determined to force the Petaybeans to make a trade: the planet for the people. They simply didn't understand that such a bargain was impossible. For the only one who could speak for Petaybee was Petaybee itself--and no one knew what a living planet could do once it found its voice...

Review:  Well, this book was exciting in some places.....and just plain odd in others.  These three books got progressively odder as the series played out.

The first one was strange, but in a good way.  The second one was a little stranger and a pretty uncomfortable in at least one place, but the book was still mostly pretty good.  This last one had less time on the planet and was less fantasy and towards the very end got really strange and really just uncomfortable - as in inter-species relationship weirdness.  Some of my favorite books, like the Foreigner series by C.J. Cherryh, involve that topic, so it's not the topic itself.  I think it was just how it was handled....and plus the man in question is not a even a humanoid some of the time.  He can transform into an animal and does so at some pretty awkward times.

I might give this book a higher rating if the entire epilogue had been left out.  I have an another trilogy that follows the next generation of this planet but I think I've had enough of this particular story.  As much as I usually love Anne McCaffrey, I'm taking them off my shelf and moving on.

Rating:  4.5 / 10