Book Reviews: Lyon’s Pride & The Tower and The Hive

Lyon’s Pride by Anne McCaffrey

Publisher: Corgi

Category: Sci-fi

Synopsis: The Lyon children continue to grow and aid in the fight against the hivers as well as the growing alliance between Mridini and humans.

 

The Tower and The Hive by Anne McCaffrey

Publisher: Corgi

Category: Sci-fi

Synopsis: In this concluding book of the Tower and the Hive series McCaffrey sews together many of the storylines and the children are fully grown up.

My Thoughts: I feel that these book focuses more on the Lyon boys. Laria and Zara do get their own sections but the biggest focus is on the boys. This isn’t necessarily negative but it is a point worth noting. Lyon’s Pride also introduces a couple of new characters, primarily Clancy, Flavia and Kincaid. I like these characters but I feel at times that this makes the books more complicated and at times to fractured.

That said, as with Damia’s Children, I really enjoy the ethical and philosophical debates that the books raise. As the search for Hiver infected worlds continue the characters are faced with issues surrounding using alien species to experiment on. There is also debate around the destruction of an entire species. The books also very deftly deals with the topic of racism in the guise of specieism (is that a word? well it is now). In these books Earth has been united under one rule and race is no longer an issue, the issues are now on a planet wide and with the introduction of the Mridin between species. Who gets preference to new planets? How should we integrate the different cultural and biological needs of the difference species? How does one understand different education systems and validate them?  All very important integration questions that we battle with in society today.

I think part of my love for these books come from the fact that I first read them as a teenager when I was becoming more politically aware. Big philosophical and political issues were very interesting to me at the time and these books gave me a “safe” place to consider them.

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