The Tower and the Hive

We get a little more plot-wise since it's the last book and needs to wrap things up, though the wrap-up still feels kind of incomplete and all over the place. There are plotlines (e.g. assassination attempts) and entire characters (e.g. Vagrian) introduced for no apparent reason. They could have been cut out completely without impacting anything else.

Zara reverted back to her book 3 values, making me wonder if someone else entirely wrote book 4. And according to the acknowledgments, McCaffrey had no idea what conclusion she was writing toward for the first four books, which was probably why it took so long for book 5 to be written; no wonder everything seemed to fall apart and not move forward in the last few books.

As if what we already show more knew about Kincaid's toxic past from the last book wasn't enough, McCaffrey adds in this book that he had an abusive childhood and, later, a dead (male) lover. It's like she felt the need to "appease" readers for forcing a gay character on them by giving him every possible horrible event in his life. Although why she bothered to make him gay when he only has sex with a woman and starts a family with her is beyond me. WTF.

Overall, this series was a struggle to get through, and after my tough time with another of McCaffrey's series, I'm not going to give much more of my time to her. show less

The conclusion of the Tower and Hive series. McCaffrey finally winds up all the far-reaching strands of her plot managing to give mostly happy ends at the finish. Some of this book feels forced- such as the strange relationship of Laria and Kincaid but other bits are quite fun. The sheer number of characters and their different settings gives a bit of a fractured feel to the book, I sort of want to concentrate on just one or two plot threads instead of six. It's a mixed bag for sure.
re-read 2/5/2023

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65 points, 3 ½ stars.

Quote:

"Looking your age finally, are you?" Afra said, noting the grizzle of silver in the T-2's dark hair and the crinkle of lines about the light green eyes.
Actually, it's constant proximity to Cwyn-Raven offspring and the rigors of dealing with all those eager young Talents.

Review:
You see how that official blurb for the book only has two sentences? Yeah, because that is about how much happened in this book. This was such a disappointing end to a series that started off so good. It was overly long and overly drawn out. Nothing happened expect deflection from things that were going to happen but didn't.

I was just so bored. Nothing that happened felt at show more all real to me. I didn't even want to finish the book and found that I just didn't care about what was happening on screen. Everything I did care about wasn't the focus, or kept getting interrupted. I just felt like I had to finish, for the sake of the four previous books I had read and mostly enjoyed.

The Tower and the Hive series, until this point, has mostly been focused on the characters. Characters I absolutely adored throughout the series. Now it focuses on nothing I cared about. There are a hell of a lot of info dumps, as all that stalling for time on the part of the author's for the previous two books in the series has caught up with her. There is a lot of McCaffrey trying to figure out the last of the outstanding problems for the series by the seat of her pants. There were even some problems that weren't even a problem prior to the start of this book for good measure. Overall a bore, and a chore, and annoying, too.

The best part of the series, the characters, were disappointing as well. Their final relationships were disappointing, and the screen time was almost non-existent (compared to The Rowan and Damia). The ending to their individual arcs were very bland and hurried. Just so disappointing.

And the science throughout the book (and perhaps the previous book, too, they all kind of just run together in my head) was ridiculous. Quite literally, I laughed out loud at some of the things that were accomplished "with science". I've read some doozies before, but this was quite special at times.

Overall, I loved the start to this series, but I'm so utterly and completely disappointed in the end. It just felt like it was stretching out the story to its detriment. I would recommend reading The Rowan as a standalone and leaving it there. show less

This wasn't a great book, but it ended the series reasonably well. And it left me wishing there were more stories in this universe, from this point out.

Anne McCaffrey is one of my all time favorite sc-fi/fantasy authors. Her 'The Tower and the Hive" series is among my favorite series of all time. The characters are engaging and the story grabs me right about and keeps me interested until the very end. I do feel that story gets a weak towards the middle but it picks up at the end. A great ending to a great series.

4.5

*Book source ~ My home library.

The Talents of FT&T along with the Space Navy and the Mrdini continue to identify all of the Hiver worlds. They need to find as many as possible and figure out a way to keep the Queens from leaving and wiping out other worlds. The descendants of the Rowan and Jeff Raven hold many of the top positions of Prime and the untalented say the Gwyn-Raven line holds too many powerful positions. However, no other single family has produced so many Primes and it’s a matter of supply and demand. Everyone demands a Prime for slinging cargo around and the Gwyn-Raven-Lyons have the most of them. Plain and simple. Now, if they can only figure out how to take care of the Hiver problem as well as the Mrdini population show more explosion then the rest should be smooth sailing. They can only hope.

This last addition to the series does a good job of putting everyone into place for future positions within FT&T, especially the grandchildren of the Rowan and Jeff Raven since they will be the ones to take over FT&T eventually with their children continuing on after them. These Talents have come such a long way from the time of Henry Darrow and even the first Peter Reidinger. Without the telepathic and telekinetic oomph of the Talents, Earth could not have explored space or settled distant worlds so quickly and efficiently. Nor would they have survived the Hiver invasion. Having a Prime on a ship in the fleet while they explore the far reaches of space means being able to keep in contact with home worlds and keeping the fleet supplied. Peter Reidinger the First would be proud since he had a fascination with space.

There is so much going on in this book and yet each person is given time on page to show how far reaching the arm of FT&T is. Lots of information, action, strange new worlds and great characters. I’m sad to see it end. All-in-all a great sci-fi/fantsy adventure. show less

The last book set in her world of The Rowan - where a nepotistic clan of psychically gifted Talents high-handedly control shipping, communication and transportation, and deal with the major issues facing civilization (relations with aliens both friendly and inimical, overpopulation, etc..) in their own way.
Gets off to a bit of slow start, explaining prior events in this world, but soon gets going with full-blown McCaffrey soap-opera.