"Zelde M'Tana" gives a fast-paced look into the life of Tregare's one-time Second Hat. It deliciously fills in the history of Zelde M'Tana, elaborates on her rise from ship's "property" to ship's Captain by the time she was 18. We see first hand the strength of will of this Wild Child, and understand her love and commitment to the ailing Parnell. If you liked "Rissa and Tregare," "Zelde M'Tana" is a must-read.

Zelde M'Tana is a main character in the Rissa Kerguelen Bran Tregare series. You get a rough sketch of her early history in the Rissa trilogy, but it leaves you with only a basic understanding of her motivations and personality. This book delves into her childhood, adolescence and early adulthood giving you an even greater appreciation of Zelde. While it is technically a prequel to the main series, it can be read at any point the reader wants insight into this character without over powering the storyline of the Rissa saga.

If you like the rest of the Rissa saga, you'll love this book, I know I did.

Rebel's Seed is the continuing story of Rissa and Tregare. These two together have overthrown the evil United Energy and Transport conglomerate that had held Earth in a stranglehold by creating a Total Welfare State. This is the story of Lisele, their daughter. She survives a shipwreck on a sparsely populated planet and with great ingenuity helps her shipmates defeat the UET outpost that nearly captures them. This is an old story, but one I have read again, and again. I guess I like it so much because the welfare state could really happen. The story can also be found in a book called the "Rebel Dynasty" which also includes the "Alien Debt".

This book continues the storyline started with the Rissa trilogy ("Young Rissa," "Rissa and Tregare," and "The Long View"). After "The Long View" comes "The Alien Debt" and then "Rebel's Seed." This story is of Lisele, daughter of Rissa Kerguelen and Bran Tregare. In many ways Lisele is similar to her parents in personality ... yet without their early harsh years of development. Too, this is the story of Arlen Limmer, son of Derek Limmer and Felcie Parager who were main characters in the earlier books as well. Arlen is even more sheltered than Lisele and this plays out in their interraction and developing relationship. It was good to see a continuation in this series, though we lose contact with many of the earlier main characters in this book.

My Review: In the begining of the book Marnie is sexually assaulted by her druggie mom's boyfriend and she happened to run away from his clutches during one of her mom's drug benges. The mother by the way is totally unware of the problem. Marnie goes to her father, who by the way isn't Captain of the ship yet, and he sneak here through the Hebegger gates. The Hebegger gates, one labeled "M" for mouth and the other labeled "T" for tush. Once you pass through the gate time speeds up. Marnie goes through gate "M" which leads to a starship that does space exploration and to top it off just by being on the ship for 2 months equals 4 earth years. During this time Marnie is discovered by the crew and the mother is on the hunt for her daughter, which lead her to the conclusion that her daughter must be on the starship Arrow with her ex-husband Clancey. Honestly, the book started great. I was curious and intriqued by the time I got to the middle of the book I started to lost interest. Anything that was about to happened was quickly short-lived! I think the author try to put the story into the views of a 12 yr old girl but it failed in my opinion. This book had alot of good ideas like the gates having to due with dimensions and that why time speeds up time. I feel this book is for the true hardcore sci-fi readers, but if you want some action this book doesn't have much as the summary in the back of the book suggested.

Humanity has overcome most of the bigger obstacles to intersteller travel by developing a powerful propulsion system and a system of gates that transports matter over an infinite distance. The gates are linked one to one so the only thing holding mankind back from exploring the galaxy is transporting the gates throughout space. On the initial journey humans accedentally run into an alien ship and damage it, puting in motion a chain of events that may destroy the Earth. All in all it seems like a lot of interesting ideas. Unfortunitly interesting ideas, on their own, do not make a good book. Busby, the author, buries his gems in a flood of verbous writing and shallow sexuality. I would estimate that 40% of the book is made up of uninteresting stories of the various chacater's sexual past. Even when the story shift view-points to the aliens, a great deal of that section is taken up by lengthy description of their sexual habits. None of this is interesting. A good basic story is so sidetracked by the writer's obsession on sex that the book just isn't worth the time you put into it. This is the first time I've read a book and actually thought "were was the editor?". A terrible 310 page book may have been condensed down to a pretty good and focused 150 pages.

This was was very difficult to get into!!! The first 100 pages was a struggle. I feel F.M. Busby had good intentions to where he was trying to lead you to with this novel but I feel he not a great story teller at all. I read his previous novel Arrow from Earth which was fairly desent but this book had so much scientific gadets, lingo & mumbo jumbo that it was so easy to get lost!! The main character Sam Gowdy was plain and I didn't care too much for him. F.M. Busby needs alot of work on character development. There were some concepts & ideas were good that's why I gave this book a 2 but I would never recommend anyone this book to read for entertainment!!