Pauline Ashwell (–2013)

Good fun, and well worth your time as long as you don't expect it to be anything but what it is. A good rollicking space adventure in the tradition of Have Spacesuit Will Travel or Red Planet. Or to take a more recent example, Scalzi's Zoe's Tale. Bright, self assured young person with an engineering and science background takes some interplanetary jaunts, has some adventures thwarts some baddies and learns a few things along the way. Fortunately for me I enjoy the bejeebers out of that sort of thing so I had a grand time reading it.… (meer)

This book chronicles the transformation of uncivilized, farmer’s daughter “Lizzie Lee” into a young woman about to graduate from the Terran College of Cultural Engineering. Reading more like a collection of stories than a single cohesive book, the first section of the book starts out with strong characterization and a story that is driven quickly along by Lizzie Lee’s very interesting and staccato dialect.

As the book progresses, the ideas behind Cultural Engineering are given more depth but less effort is spent on characterization and dialogue. Sadly this is the book’s primary problem. The author starts out with decent story about an interesting character learning a fascinating career. However, the author never reveals enough supporting data for the book to be considered hard science-fiction and the ever diminishing characterization results in this science-fiction fan feeling somewhat disappointed by what should have been an exciting read.… (meer)