Reviews

Signs of Life by Cherry Wilder

coffeeandink's review

Companion novel to Second Nature, written fourteen years later, dealing with the same wreck, but focusing on another set of survivors in a distant location. The survivors no sooner land than squabbles break out between the ship's crew (mostly independent scientific researchers and spacers) and their passengers (a family/acting troupe), who see the new world as an environment they need to learn, and another set of passengers, a paramilitary troop, who perceive Rhomary as a war zone full of potential enemies. The humans are, of course, their own worst enemies.

Much less successful than the previous book: the huge cast is hard to differentiate; the spacer slang sounds terribly silly; and the villains are flat and uninteresting, if not entirely implausible.