Aliens, baby! Yeah!!!!

The Hidden Worlds
The Cold Minds
The Dark Reaches by Kristin Landon
Status: Library Books
Grade: C

Tagline: After the Earth was destroyed by ruthless machine intelligences known as the Cold Minds, the remnants of the human race sought refuge on the Hidden Worlds.


I miss science fiction. Sure, I love fantasy but watching the new Star Trek movie this year reminded me of how much I love S/F and how little I've been getting of it lately. Movies are doing a good job of getting the message out -- Transformers, Iron Man, Escape from Witch Mountain, Aliens in the Attic -- but there's nothing like sinking your teeth into a good s/f novel. Unfortunately, this experience isn't quite that.

Now, before I start tearing these books apart and telling you where the author went wrong I want to emphasize that C means average. It means the author may have made mistakes that keep things from being an A but she did enough right that I am not trashing her work. It means she kept me reading in spite of flaws. It means there is good in these books along with the bad and that they aren't a total waste of time. Just saying.

Plot: Linnea Kiaho is nineteen and looking at a really bad future if she can't find a way to fix things. Her home world is a backwater, hostile planet that barely ekes out an existence for its inhabitants when things are going well. And right now, things ain't going well. To save her family Linnea breaks the greatest taboo of her people and accepts an indenture on the godless, decadent planet of the Pilot Masters hoping she will be able to blackmail one of them with an old family secret. This secret is apparently worth a great deal of money. The only problem? She doesn't have a clue what the secret is -- just what the container it is in looks like. She has to hope that information will be enough to trigger fear in the man she is about to tell it to.

The man to whom she is about to tell it to, Ian van Paolo, has problems of his own -- one of them being that he never agreed to take on an indentured servant and another being that he is in danger of losing his position. Not to add that he has no clue what the container she is talking about holds! Knowing that Linnea can only be a trap set by his enemies, Ian ignores advice from all sides and tries to find out how Linnea got there and just what it is that she doesn't know that could hurt him.

But this is hardly the time for any of this because after six centuries of hiding the cold minds have finally found them . . . . . .

Solving the riddle of the secret and working to save their world will take Linnea and Ian to places they never expected to go and give them a love that can cross galaxies.

The Nitpicking: I am probably hampered from understanding the following because I am a woman but here it is: Why do people assume that women will get to outer space and decide that freedom isn't for us and we want to give up every right we have ever earned? I mean, really? I won't want to vote, own property, or have the right to work to feed myself? Is the air out there too thin or something???? What really amazes is that this tends to come from the pens of women sci-fi writers-- men expect us to be able to do everything and look hot doing it; women seem to expect that we will want to redo the work of Ms. Anthony. The world Linnea comes from has women as very sub-standard citizens which just struck me as . . a touch stupid. I could understand if it had been explained that these people were the Amish, still sticking to their traditions even out there in space after several hundred years (and good for them if that is the ever the case) but they aren't. They are religious (I would guess some form of Anglican from what I read)but it makes no sense as to why the women would have no rights. To add to that I am confused as to why they landed on this world and then promptly threw in the towel. It did not sound like they tried to make the best of the place at all.

Another point which is not isolated to this particular series is the assumption that mankind will get to outer space and cease to be innovative. I don't buy that for a minute. Our technology is replaced every five years right now -- I think the more techno dependent we become the more we will crave better and better machines. It's just our nature. I buy that whole situation turning on us but I don't buy the idea that we won't be innovative.

I don't like "other space" or whatever people name it. The idea that we somehow have to mentally navigate some form of non-existence to travel the outer reaches of space hasn't worked for me since Dune and didn't work for me here. (Now see Dune made sense -- those people worked hard to make something of that planet but I digress.)

I also don't get humanity setting up a colony on a world where there are no resources and death is inevitable without outside help. A colony indicates a decision and I would think that decision would be more thought out.

In later books when we get to find out just who and what "The Cold Minds" are the revelation seems rushed and almost swept over like it is of no significance. It also carries on an ongoing theme, in a sense, of these books which is that survival trumps problem resolution. One of the themes I love in s/f is that problem resolution equals survival, so I find this a bit off putting. That could just be me though.

In fairness to Ms. Landon these "mistakes" (if indeed they are that) are common errors in the entire genre, not just her book. But that doesn't completely exempt her either - I would have appreciated at least a halfhearted attempt at explaining some of this.

In the end this was a really hard review to write. I don't want to completely discourage people from reading the books because they are, I think, worth at least a try. On the other hand, I don't want to encourage people to think they are precisely great reads either -- they aren't perfect and might fall apart under intense scrutiny.

The Tea: Any "Celestial" Seasonings tea has a nice spatial theme to it. Enjoy!