Kirsten Reviews: Lyon's Pride by Anne McCaffrey

, by Kt Clapsadl

Lyon's Pride by Anne McCaffrey 
Tower and Hive #4


The Hive acts as a single entity, relentlessly swarming the galaxy, endlessly propagating on every habitable world they encounter—destroying native populations in the process. They do not recognize any sentience but their own. They do not acknowledge any attempt to communicate with them. They do not understand they leave countless numbers of dead in their wake.


The Prime Talents of the Raven-Lyon clan—telepaths, teleporters, and telekinetics—have protected the Alliance from the Hive breeding contagion for years. Now a fleet orbits the alien homeworld to prevent them from leaving, and a Hive queen and her eggs are in captivity and quarantined. And unless the Raven-Lyons break the language barrier between Human and Hive, the Alliance may have no choice but to eliminate their entire race…

Lyon’s Pride, by Anne McCaffrey is the fourth installment in the ‘Tower and Hive’ series. As with any long-running series, it can be hard to know whether or not it’s possible to jump into the middle of the story, and if a book is a stand-alone, that’s certainly easy enough to do. However, Lyon’s Pride is not one such book. If readers are not already familiar with the characters and world, this book will leave them completely lost and confused.

This isn’t surprising, the series involves characters that are descendents of the Rowan, who have teleportational and telepathic abilities. They use their talents to deal with the Hivers, insect-like aliens who are hostile to any creature who is not one of their own kind.

In this volume, the Lyon-Raven clan’s members do their best to handle the movement of supplies and material telekinetically from Earth to other worlds. The story balances romance, diplomatic, and military subplots while giving the spotlight to several of the Lyon’s children, allowing other characters to take supporting roles. McCaffrey is gifted at creating universes, and this one is no exception, and is richly drawn with aliens and people who have distinct agendas and motivations.

The issue of communication with the Hive is brought to the forefront with the imprisonment of the Hiver queen, and the question of whether or not to destroy their entire race is one that will resonate for anybody who has been following the series, or who can pick up on historical parallels.

However, after several books, having people solve nearly every problem with telekinetic powers is a tired plot device, and instead of focusing more on the interesting social issues of having people with such gifts in power, or any of the other subplots, McCaffrey dwells on other subjects.

While this book does manage to conclude several story threads, it suffers from a wandering plot. This isn’t to say that the Rowan and Hivers aren’t interesting, but the story would be improved from a more developed narrative. In addition, with so many characters it may be difficult to tell them apart.
In summary,, the book has enough story for the book to be of a significantly shorter length, which would ultimately serve it better. Longtime readers will find something in it to move the story along, and anyone new to the series or McCaffrey’s writing should start at the beginning of the series.

(Received a copy from the publisher)


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Previous Books:
  1. The Rowan
  2. Damia
  3. Damia's Children
  4. The Tower and the Hive
