Reading the Wind - Hardcover

BRENDA COOPER is the author of The Silver Ship and the Sea and the co-author of the novel Building Harlequin's Moon, which she wrote with Larry Niven.  Her solo and collaborative short fiction has appeared in multiple magazines, including Analog, Asimov's, Strange Horizons, Oceans of the Mind, and The Salal Review.  She lives in Kirkland, Washington.

*Starred Review* Told in eight long, first-person accounts, the sequel to The Silver Ship and the Sea (2007) is set two-and-a-half years later and is just as gripping. Genetically changed Chelo, who with fellow “adapted” Liam and Kayleen has remained on the planet Fremont to live among the few thousand original humans who had defeated the invading altered humans earlier, narrates the first segment. The trio of Chelo’s brother Joseph, his sweetheart Alicia, and their friend Bryan as well as the enigmatic Jenna have left on a spaceship. Although the three on Fremont have been adopted and befriended by many of the “true humans,” most fear and despise the trio because of their augmentations. Joseph, a wind reader with the ability to interact directly with data and who pilots the starship mentally rather than manually, relates alternating segments, which follow the trials of trying to adjust to life on a very complex planet, where everyone has augmentations. He manages to find his father, who had left with the defeated altered after the battle for Fremont, and learns that the bellicose Star Mercenaries have been hired to wipe out all human life on Fremont, which would include his sister and other friends. The distinctive characterizations remain complex, internally and in interrelationships, and Cooper’s depictions of both worlds are exceptional. A welcome follow-up. --Sally Estes