Powers That Be (Petaybee Series #1)

by Anne McCaffrey, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Overview

From the Hugo and Nebula award-winning authors comes the Petaybee series, full of gripping fantasy and daring adventure.
 
Strange things are happening on the icy planet of Petaybee: Unauthorized genetically engineered species have been spotted; geologic survey teams sent to locate newly detected mineral deposits are either coming up empty or disappearing altogether. And the locals aren’t talking—especially not to the company bent on exploiting the planet. 

Disabled combat veteran Yanaba Maddock seems to be the perfect spy for the company. The frailty that was a liability in the military allows her to gain the trust of the Petaybean natives. But miraculously, with Yana’s relocation to the arctic planet comes the return of her health and strength. And the closer she gets to the people of Petaybee, the more determined she is to protect her new home. For something unusual and wonderful is happening on Petaybee. Something worth fighting for, even dying for—but especially, something worth living for. . . .

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780345387790
Publisher:	Random House Worlds
Publication date:	05/01/1994
Series:	Petaybee Trilogy , #1
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.74(w) x 11.02(h) x 0.92(d)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Anne McCaffrey, one of the world’s most popular authors, is best known for her Dragonriders of Pern® series. She was the first woman to win the two top prizes for science fiction writing, the Hugo and Nebula awards. She was also given the American Library Association’s Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement in Young Adult Fiction, was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and was named a Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1926, McCaffrey relocated to Ireland in the 1970s, where she lived in a house of her own design, named Dragonhold-Underhill. She died in 2011.

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, winner of the Nebula Award for her novel The Healer’s War, is the author of numerous fantasy novels. She has co-authored twelve novels with Anne McCaffrey. She lives on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.

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Excerpted from "Powers That Be"
by .
Copyright © 1994 Anne McCaffrey.
Excerpted by permission of Random House Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

A frontier society outwits a big, uncaring parent company in this appealing joint venture by McCaffrey ( Damia's Children ) and Scarborough ( The Healer's War ), the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning representatives of two generations of science fiction writers. Major Yanaba Maddock, medically retired with severely damaged lungs after military action aboard a space station, is pressured into acting as a spy by her employer, the sinister Intergal corporation. Colonel Giancarlo, local head of psychological operations, seeks evidence that colonists on the bitterly cold and inhospitable planet Petaybee are abducting company geological survey teams, engaging in illegal genetic engineering and plotting rebellion. Yana finds the locals charming, helpful and uncannily effective as healers; their home remedies salvage her ruined lungs. As the company and its forces move in to quell what they perceive as rebellion, Yana casts her lot with the Petaybeans and geneticist Sean Shongili, the man she has come to love. Perceptive characterizations and a vivid depiction of a nurturing culture integrated with nature make up for the somewhat hackneyed plot. (July)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Forced by her ruined lungs to resign from active service with the Company, Major Yanaba Maddock ``retires'' to the ice-bound planet of Petaybee with an order to mingle with the colonists and discover the source of certain anomalies on the planet. What she finds is both a new way of life and a challenge to all the loyalties she has ever known. Award-winning author McCaffrey (the ``Dragonriders of Pern'' series) and Scarborough ( The Healer's War , Bantam, 1989) combine their talents to produce an exciting tale of survival and moral courage featuring an engaging female protagonist. This fast-paced adventure belongs in most collections.

Library Journal

YA-A well-written, entertaining novel. Ex-soldier Major Yanaba Maddock has retired to the ``company'' planet of Petaybee due to major lung damage from poison gas. Strange things are going on there. Survey teams are disappearing, and the locals are acting suspiciously. As it turns out, the planet is alive and the natives have formed a beneficial symbiotic relationship with it, and it is threatened by the exploitive company that is mining precious gems. While not a completely original idea, the story will be enjoyed by McCaffrey and Scarborough fans alike.-John Lawson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA

School Library Journal

Two popular sf/fantasy writers have joined forces to create a singular world, the icy planet Petaybee, which has been terraformed and stocked not only with genetically engineered flora and fauna that can withstand temperatures that range as low as minus 200 degrees Fahrenheit, but also with cold-weather natives displaced from their homelands by the company. For 200 years the planet has been used as a replacement depot for the company's troops. Now Major Yanaba Maddock, whose lungs have been severely damaged by poison gas, has been retired to Petaybee, where she is assigned to spy on the civilian populace, which the company suspects has caused the disappearance or death of company geologists searching for mineral deposits. What Yana finds, however, is a friendly, welcoming group of people whose lives are so attuned to the planet that they seem a part of it. As she acclimates and heals and learns more about her new home, Yana determines to protect her new friends from the company's machinations. Infused with an overriding sense of Inuit and Celtic lore, the story is an engrossing one in which characterizations are well defined and suspense is sustained till the planet's secret is revealed.

Sally Estes