Having colonised an icy, mountainous planet and used names from Norse myth to map it, earthlings have developed telepathy and telekinesis but renounced rocket science and modern medicine. So when a mysterious sickness starts to kill people they have to gather together to send a telepathic message into space to summon their old friend Jess who has a space ship to come and help them. But when she arrives she is accompanied by her husband Dahll who was the previous love interest of Tamarinth (who, however, is now falling for the extraordinarily handsome Vidarh who himself is developing the ability to teleport). Then slavers arrive on the planet and kidnap Tamarinth and others. Can Jess and Vidarh and Dahll, together with Tamarinth's siblings and her pet icecat find and free Tamarinth at the same time as discovering a cure for the illness?
A carefully plotted and fast paced science fiction romance although sometimes the potential for conflict between the characters was not fully developed. Goodies are goodies and baddies are baddies. The only two goodies who appear to do something bad are quickly killed off and what they actually did is never fully explored. The love triangles could have been exploited more fully as could have the tension between Vidarh's loyalty to the mission and his desire to return home to save his family. And the deus ex machina at the end was just a little audacious. Nevertheless, a perfectly readable example of the genre.
June 2018; 218 pages
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