Review: bittersweet
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 24, 2011
Ms Somerville was already known to me as a more than competent author (not a given among M/M romance writers, especially ladies) but with this one she really outshines most of her collegues.I am not in a position to evaluate the absolute originality of the plot itself as I am no avid reader of SF in general, but as far as M/M fiction is concerned it was quite new and engaging: Temin is a deep space pilot who crashes on a supposedly uninhabited planet only to find it peopled by a society of intelligent catlike bipeds. After several vicissitudes human and cats get to know and appreciate each other and a special relationship is forged between the human and one of the cats.There is nothing kinky in this: the aliens may be catlike but they are sentient and just as clever as humans.All this story is beautifully told. The author manages to convey the believable feelings of a man stranded in the middle of nowhere with no hope of getting rescued and the perspective of a curiously alien society. As far as catpeople are concerned their behaviour is clearly patterned along the lines of our terrestrial cats (lion prides come to mind) but those patterns also serve as a basis for a nicely developped alien psychology, believably different from ours. The love story is warm and intimate, nicely done.I can only find two flaws in this book.The pacing could have been expanded further to give the evolution of the characters' interaction even more scope; do not misunderstand me, this book is long (and a good deal for its $4,99) but it could have been even longer and even more satisfying.Second, Ms Somerville's writing, elsewhere perfectly neat, becomes a little clumsy when trying to write down the attempts of the characters to speak each other's language. As it happens often it did get in the way.There are some sex scenes, explicit but plot related and never indulged upon, which is always fine with me but could disappoint readers looking for hotter stuff. The ending is a little sad, bittersweet so to say. Even here the author manages to convey great depth of feeling with not one redundant word.