Naero's Gambit

The rambling second installment of the Spacer Clans adventure series (after Naero's Run) continues the saga of Spacer Captain Naero Amashin Maeris, who leads her people against evil alien invaders. Naero was once a "teknomancer" who could meld her mind with starships and other machines, but her mental abilities have gone dormant. Plagued by increasingly frequent nightmares and headaches (perhaps related to Om, an alien AI living in her brain) and alarmed by the threat of the voracious alien Ejjai, Naero seeks out the legendary Spacer Mystics for training. After learning to control her powers, she heads off to help fight the Fifth Spacer War between Spacers and the Gigacorps, while dodging a new foe bent on using captured Mystics to fuel their deadly Darkforce generators. Weighted down by a slow pace, repetitious language ("Brutal attacks... brutal lesson... brutal lessons... brutal, direct examples... it made sense, in a brutal way"), and unnecessary details, this chapter in Naero's saga is strictly for series fans. (Feb.)