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I read her short story "Blued Moon" back in the eighties in Asimov's magazine, and it stuck with me every since as some of the funnest and funniest sci-fi I've read. This book is all that, in novel form.

The romance is weaved right into a great time travel story that pokes fun at everything and everyone. I confess I'm going to have to go back and read it again just pick up the clues I know were there the first time, that I missed while zooming through.

Unless you hate Victorian England, romance and time travel (and maybe even if you do), this is well worth reading.

Not often I say this, but this book needed to be longer.

First up, it's age doesn't hurt it at all. The tech involved is mostly incidental to the plot, and pretty hand wavy. Sure data storage seems to on tape, but that's only mentioned the once, and maybe it was just a rough translation :-).
The rest of it just works.

The book is chock full of interesting characters, with a backdrop that has tons of interest. And that's the problem... There just isn't enough time spent to realize all that potential. I found it to get pretty jumpy, especially in the last third or so I really wanted to know everything that was going on and why, but got only glimpses. It's a three, but could have easily been more with another hundred pages or so.

I went into this book with no expectations, a used book store chance purchase, from an authour I've never read. It was a pleasant surprise.

The concept is the well trodden generational colony ship fleet. Without ruining anything, things devolve over the years.

I kept expecting the story that develops, to explode into frantic action and meyhem, and it never does. It's so nice when it's not the absolute worst thing that can happen, that drives the novel forward.

For the most part people are people, not dazzling heros and horribly evil figureheads.

The characters are believable and relatable, the backdrop interesting, and the outcome likeable.

Sounds like damning with faint praise perhaps, but I did enjoy it. It was nice.

Loads of fun, but the longer it goes, the farther it gets from its promising start as "real" scifi. The author's afterword discussing the long process creating this book was quite interesting. I wonder if I personally might have liked one of the earlier versions?
The backdrop is great, the characters engaging. By all means read it, but I guess I was hoping for something it's not.

Lots of fun, haven't read a Pern book in ages. It's fantasy, once you skip the premise, but it's light fun fantasy.