Primary Inversion by Catherine Asaro
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I used to enjoy Catherine Asaro's short fiction back in the 80's, occupying a very short but ravenous SF period for me where I actually had subscribed to SF magazines rather than focusing entirely on novels. That being said, I had successfully MISSED all her novels ever since.

And why? I HAVE NO IDEA. Or rather, the bookshelves in bookstores conveniently didn't stock them. I got all the Lois McMaster Bujold SFs, the Vorkosigans, which are similar to this, but nobody had pushed Catherine Asaro where I lived. It just... fell beneath the cracks. I'm sad. So many great SF authors fell that way during the 90's, and then never got any reprints, and are generally lost to history because there was no electronic versions until a decade later.

*rages*

Ahem, anyway, my ears perked up THIS MUCH LATER and now I hunted all these down and now I'm finally RIGHTING A MASSIVE WRONG.

Mid-nineties SF is some of the best. It's pretty hardcore science with the fiction with thoroughly balanced characters, romance, intrigue, action, and heart. Basically, it has a lot of everything and doesn't skimp. Sure, it's a light adventure-type SF with princes and princesses, but it is also full of battle-hardened psy-tech-AI warriors, a little trauma, and a lot of pretty great worldbuilding that will probably last a good long time.

In other words, I'm thrilled to find something like this. Onward!



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