author : S. L. Viehl

Dr Cherijo Grey Veil takes a position as surgeon in a colony planet's chronically understaffed emergency room in order to escape Earth, and the dreadful secret she has discovered about her father. But once there, she finds herself treating species she's never seen before, enduring the hostility of her colleagues, investigating what might be an unknown plague, and dodging the long reach of her father.

This is certainly a breathless page turner. The alien trauma room scenes are great -- a sort of "E.R. in Space". Although there are lots of juicy alien physiologies, there are rather fewer alien psychologies, however. But it makes a pleasant change to be in a universe full of alien races where Terrans are for once not top dogs: in fact, most Terrans are despised bigots. There's plenty of plot density -- the hospital scenes would be enough for most books, but here we also have a love story, a not-love story, a discussion about sentience, a conspiracy, and a small space battle, too. The frenetic pace and interesting detail make it a fun read.

There is a satisfactory degree of closure at the end, but it is blindingly obvious there is to be a sequel. Which I'm off to read.

Her adopted clan give Dr Cherijo Grey Veil a refuge from her scheming father on their space exploration ship. But the Terran League won't let her alone, and bounty hunters keep hounding her. And to cap it all, there's a saboteur on board, and most of the evidence points to it being her!

More and bloodier trauma room scenes, a few great aliens (I particularly like Squilyp), some good fights (it makes a change to see that the people hitting each other get hurt), and the same amount of breathless page-turning action as StarDoc. Also, some of the events of the previous book have interesting repercussions here.

Warning: there is very little closure at the end this time: it's just a set-up for the sequel.

To save her adopted clan from the Terran League, Dr Cherijo Grey Veil tricks the League Fleet into being captured by the dreaded Hsktskt slavers. But then she herself is betrayed into the same slavers hands by her own husband. Beaten, branded, and serially tortured by her sadistic captors, and hated by her fellow slaves, her life gets nasty, brutish, and potentially very short. So she fights back the only way she knows how, by whipping a sullen medical team into shape, by bravura feats of alien surgery, and by never giving in.

Even more breathless a page turner than the previous books, and rather darker in tone, as Cherijo comes in for a lot of personal pain. But there's the usual bunch of interesting aliens, interesting surgery, and interesting mould.

Dr Cherijo Torin and her husband Duncan Reever fall into a trap set by her father, Joseph Grey Veil, and end up in his laboratory back on Earth, and a horrified Cherijo discovers just what plans this monster has for her. But before he can complete his plans, they are rescued by a group of cave-dwelling Navajo, and then their troubles really begin...

Another breathless a page turner that dumps the reader straight in the action with little time for recap or backstory -- just the way I like them. Rather less medicine than usual -- Cherijo saves relatively few lives by acts of heroic surgery -- and fewer exotic aliens. But the plot is significantly advanced, as we meet old friends and enemies, and find some interesting new ones.

Cherijo, her husband Duncan, and their daughter Marel are back on her adopted Clan's ship, and she's on her way to take the winged Hawk, and Dhreen, back to their respective home planets. But she finds herself in the middle of one interstellar war, possibly the cause of a second, with a new intern seemingly spying on her, and with Squilyp courting a snooty bride. And not everything goes well on the home planets, either.

More medicine (getting a tad unconvincing in places -- the explanation of evolution of Hawk's wings didn't seem all that plausible, somehow), more fighting, and more revelations, as the action continues, and the plot gets more convoluted. I do wish that Cherijo would just occasionally not break heads first, and ask questions later, though.

Cherijo certainly doesn't have an easy life. For the last two years she has been stranded, amnesiac and badly wounded, on an incredibly hostile, deeply misogynistic planet, which is becoming the centrepiece of a major rebellion. Her husband Duncan Reever is desperately searching for her, but so are many factions of bad guys. And if she is rescued, the result might be interstellar war.

There's a lot of fighting, and a bit of medicine, and of course Cherijo gets into trouble because, as a woman, she's not allowed to practice. However, because she's amnesiac through all the book, it's harder to relate to her as the character from the earlier books, because she doesn't know who she is, and has undergone a bit of a character change in the process. Nevertheless, it's a great page turner, and, like the rest, although it finishes to some degree, there's clearly a lot more for Cherijo to suffer through yet.

Cherijo Torin has been rescued from the hellish planet Akkabarr. But all is not yet well. She is still amnesiac, having no memory before that icy planet, and, what's more, no desire to regain the memories of a person who seems to have had a dreadful life, and who she doesn't even like. She insists that she is Jarn, a different person merely inhabiting the body of Dr Torin. And she has a different personality, that of a submissive Akkabarrian female -- not Cherijo's style at all. All of this deeply distresses Squilyp, and Reever. Then the Hsktskt demand Cherijo's help to stem a plague that is killing them all. Jarn still has Cherijo's medical skills, and agrees to help -- despite the fact the Hsktskt have a death price on Cherijo's head. Once at the Hsktskt's home world, things get complicated, and dangerous, and medical, very quickly.

Although the main character is Jarn, not Cherijo, this is still in the Cherijo universe, which was not the case for the majority of Rebel Ice. It is also interesting to see the very different personality, and the reactions of all Cherijo's friends and colleagues to this new person. It's also fun to find out whether she will remain Jarn, recover Cherijo, or whether something different, and more traumatic, will happen. The plot device introduced at the end to keep the series running for several hundred more books seems a bit unnecessary, however; surely she has enough problems already!

Reever and Jarn decide they have to leave Joren when a terrorist grenade is sent to kill Cherijo. So they go off and end up in even more danger, stranded on a hostile world under blockade, where the colonists are being preyed on by a ravening flesh-eating alien. They have 30 days to solve the problem before the blockader destroys the colony. And then there's the black crystal to contend with, too. Situation normal, then.

Jarn is still Jarn, although she has all Cherijo's memories second hand from Reever, and bits of Cherijo's personality slip out under duress. She even starts having dream memories that must be directly Cherijo's. But she is determined to hold onto her own selfhood, even as she becomes more assertive and less of a submissive doormat.

The plot here seems a bit wobblier than in some of the previous in the series, with rather too much aimless to-ing and fro-ing, and not enough action. I want Cherijo back, despite her irritating habits. They're differently irritating from Jarn's irritating habits. But there are a few new alien species here, and what's nice is that many of them never get described as aliens until Jarn has to operate on their third eye, or fourth leg, or whatever.

Reever and Jarn come discover something interesting about the black crystal, and hare off to oKia to investigate, along with the brilliant but mysterious doctor, Jylyj. But when Jylyj gets infected with the crystal and begins to reveal who he really is, Jarn's problems have only just started. Captured by the oKia, and then by the Odnallak, Jarn must race to save Jylyj, but this might result in crystal destruction of the whole galaxy. All in a day's work, then.

The usual frenetic and somewhat confusing plotting slams Jarn around the universe in the usual way. It's good to see her getting into difficulties because of things she has done as Jarn, not just as Cherijo. There's lots of revelations about the black crystal, and then a massive plot development at the end. Next!

With Cherijo back, and Reever devastated by the loss of Jarn, it needs a galaxy-wide crisis to stop the pair tearing each other to pieces. Fortunately, we get one, in the shape of the final showdown with the black crystal, as Cherijo gets sucked 6 million years into the past through a mysterious rift. There she sets about putting things to rights in her trademark fashion, while being simultaneously squicked by the idea that a stranger has been living in her head for the last five years.

This is the finale in the ten-book series, tying together a lot of loose ends about Cherijo's genesis, about Maggie, and about the black crystal. You could drive a galaxy-sized spaceship through the plot holes (Cherijo's see-sawing reactions to Reever, Reever's unexplained about-face, the wonky evolutionary timescales, the gob-smacking final solution to the black crystal problem that has a totally anti-butterfly effect), but it's a great page-turner getting there, and it's good to have Cherijo back (even if not everyone is pleased to see her).