The Universe Against Her

This should have been a fun read, another of Schmitz's stories about teenage girls with psychic powers, as per The Witches of Karres. Unfortunately, there's a lot of telling/info dumping and the Telzey character is what I would classify as a Mary Sue, from classic Trek fanfic days, that is, a female character who is perfect and whom everyone loves. The only difference is that the book lacks the romantic element - but basically the character is so perfect - genius, good looking, develops increasingly fantastic telepathic and other psionic powers - that there's no real drama. The only interesting thing was her relationship with the large intelligent cat of the first story, and how she has to save him, but he is subsequently dropped.

Stories about telepaths and psi powers could hardly be avoided in science fiction and fantasy in the 50's and 60's and that topic lost interest with me rather quickly in retrospect. It probably explains why I never read this book from 1964 despite liking the author a lot. This story begins with a 15 year old girl described as a genius who is developing telepathic abilities with her pet "cat", a rather unique creature found as a kitten who has grown into something like a chameleon mountain lion. But Tick-Tock, the "cat", is an intelligent companion to the star of this show Telzey Amberdon. Unfortunately after about the first quarter of the book this part of the story which could have gone in interesting directions is done and we move on show more to the girl with super psi powers. There's an unclear description of how these telepathic powers come to life. The next thing you know Telzey is modifying her cranky aunt into a nice person and exploring the minds of fellow students, a dog and an ET. It is no surprise to me that we might soon have "the universe against her." However most of the book concerns a plot on the life of a friend and fellow student. Honestly I got bored with it very quickly.

Some editions of this book apparently contain several extra short stories but my older Ace paperback was just the single novel. show less

A fun quick read. Telzey Amberdon's aunt takes her and her pet Tick Tock - a strange looking Puma-sized cat Telzey found when she was a kitten, home to TT's planet.
There they find a race of telepaths who open Telzey's latent gifts.
Move back to college and exploration of a new talent along with law courses - and an unauthorized implant to prevent her from using her psi and encourage her to work for the company complicated things...
then her best friends dogs acts weird - and the adventure is on again!
Can she beat the compulsion? Can she find the danger? Can she save her friend? For that matter, will she graduate as a lawyer?
According to the front cover, this is book one of a set.

A young woman discovers that she can "talk" to her very unusual cat-like pet--and just in time!

baen ebook