Taking place about 80 yrs after To Ride Pegasus Rhyssa Owen, granddaughter of Daffyd op Owen, is now the Director of the Center for Parapsychic Talents on the North American East Coast. Along with many descendants of the original members, Rhyssa is under extreme pressure to provide kinetics to complete the Padrugoi Space Platform. Without the kinetics the space platform construction is falling behind schedule. With Earth’s population already straining its resources to the limit the space platform needs to be completed on time in order to use it for a jumping point for colony ships to be sent off to habitable planets. But that’s not the only problem the Director has to deal with. Rhyssa is being visited in her sleep by someone who can travel out of body. She can’t get enough of who or where he is to pinpoint his location, so they have to search for him. Someone that powerful needs to be under the protection of the center and he needs to be trained in his Talent, whichever Talent that may be. When they finally find 14-yr-old Peter Reidinger in a hospital, paralyzed from the waist down as the result of an accident and realize he’s been boosting his kinetic talent with electricity they are staggered by the thought of his potential.In another part of the city Tirla is a 12-yr-old girl living in Residential Linear G. Her parents are dead, but she makes a decent living serving the many different ethnic groups in her linear never realizing that her knack for survival and speaking many languages is actually Talent. When the Center and Law Enforcement and Order try to crack down on a child kidnapping ring in Linear G they discover Tirla and her unusual Talent. Coaxing her to the Center she thrives along with Peter. Then the unthinkable happens. Both Tirla and Peter get kidnapped and everyone rushes to find them before it’s too late.After discovering this series back in 1990 I couldn’t read them fast enough. I had them in my hot little hands as soon as they were published. I like that this book picks up a few generations after To Ride Pegasus because we can see the progress already made while learning the problems this generation of Talents have to deal with. I have to say that I’m glad our world isn’t as crowded as McCaffrey portrayed in this book. Yikes! Those Linears! *shudder*Well-written with rich characters and a great plot this book is another winner with me. The potential of Peter just boggles the mind and in this book it hasn’t even really been tested yet. Tirla is also another great character with an unusual Talent. It makes me wonder how many more ways Talent will evolve over time. Oh, wait…I’ve already read all the books, so I know. *grins* That doesn’t dim my enjoyment of the re-read. I haven’t read this series in a number of years, so I’m thoroughly enjoying them all over again.*Book source ~ My home library.
This was a pretty good story and an interesting world, with psychic powers and all. However, the conflicts were kind of soft-pedaled and the resolutions a little too neatly wrapped up for me to suspend my disbelief. I was wondering if that was more a result of when the author wrote it than the author's personal style, but then I discovered it was published in 1990 instead of 1950, so I'm pretty sure it's a style choice I happen to disagree with. It was still quite readable and had some neat ideas, though.
When I read To Ride Pegasus last year, I was distressed by its sexism and racism. Thus, I approached sequel Pegasus in Flight -- a cherished childhood favorite -- with trepidation. Would it live up to my rose-colored recollection?Well. Yes and no. It's incredibly creepy to see the novel treating its dystopia as a utopia. For example, the government enforces mandatory sterilization for all the poor slum-dwellers, and all the heroic characters denigrate those poor breeders who keep selling their illegal children to organ-harvesters. (Gee, characters, maybe if these women had any economic options, they wouldn't need to sell their kids!)And this doesn't even go into some of the questionable plot developments, such as all the characters applauding a middle-aged man falling in love with a twelve-year-old who looks nine. (I'm having horrible flashbacks to Damia!)But. What I still love is pre-pubescent Tirla scrambling through the slum ducts and playing all sides against one another with a mercenary zeal. Despite some questionable quirks, the core elements -- the unionized Talents, crippled Peter, and scrappy Tirla -- hang together in a relentless (if brainless) plot. There may be some unpleasant ideological assumptions operating in the background, but the surface of Pegasus in Flight is smooth and sleek. And I really love Tirla.
—Adobe
Apparently a second of a series. Despite her idiosyncracies as a writer, her work remains engaging. This series investigates Talent, or paranormal abilities, which have been normalized and actually valued in its service to human endeavor. Rare, Talent is actively searched and highly sought, and two youngsters are found who have indeed rare abilities. Peter, a quadriplegic, gestalts with outside power sources to OOB travel and develops unique kinetics which work on both his own body and on vast masses like spacecraft. Tirla, an unregistered child in the huge human hives known as Linears, has unusual empathy and talent for languages.
—Victoria
