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Crystal Line (Crystal Singer #3)
"A treat for long-time McCaffrey fans, a good read and a satisfying look at one of the most haunting facets of the crystal singers' profession."
LOCUS
When Killashandra Ree joined the mysterious Heptite Guild, she knew that she would be forever changed. Crystal singing brought ecstasy and pain, near-eternal life...and gradual loss of memory. What she hadn't counted on was th...more
LOCUS
When Killashandra Ree joined the mysterious Heptite Guild, she knew that she would be forever changed. Crystal singing brought ecstasy and pain, near-eternal life...and gradual loss of memory. What she hadn't counted on was th...more
Mass Market Paperback, 320 pages
Published
April 9th 2002
by Del Rey
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Anne McCaffrey's books usually get a 3 from me, meaning "Don't expect to get much of lasting value from this, but it's fun." But this one falls below that line. Its plot is not really interesting or believable... in fact I can hardly remember it though I read it just a few months ago (& have been, since I signed up, reviewing books I read years ago which I remember just fine.) It seems as if this book exists simply to solve Killashandra's problems so she can live Happily Ever After. Ap...more
Oddly for a fantasy fan, I had never read a solo Anne McCaffrey book. I happened upon this one on CD and mostly listened to it while walking to and from work. However, part of the way through the second CD I got back to my apartment and was so interested in what would happen next that I couldn't turn it off. The woman reading it did an excellent job and the story was intriguing (part fantasy, slight romance). Now that I know this is book 3, it makes sense that I was slightly confused in places; ...more
(294 pgs.) Third in the crystal singer series. This book is not as well-written as most McCaffrey books. McCaffrey starts out with a mystery about a new kind of ?(fluid metal) which Killishandra calls "junk". Then the middle of the book gets bogged down in things that have nothing to do with the mystery and the end of the book goes back to the planet with the "junk" but answers no questions about it. Perhaps the next book in the series will be more focused and answer som...more
The third book in McCaffrey's Crystal Singer series, this book takes place several centuries after the events of the first book. If you've read the other two books, you'll likely enjoy this one. I liked this book better than it's predecessor "Killashandra", which was almost a bodice-ripping romance (complete with swarthy sailor). Returning to the Ballybran setting, the story largely focuses on the effects of memory loss on the long-lived Crystal Singer. Several characters from earl...more
The bitch is back!
I would have loved these books if Killashandra would've stop being so inconsiderate and nasty throughout the whole series! I really liked the second book because for the most part she was strong, funny and only pretending to be a bitch (I loved when she told Lars - and I'm paraphrasing since I can't remember where it is in my e-book - "you didn't expect me to sit around waiting for you to come back did you?"), but in this book there was no pretense, she was just...more
I would have loved these books if Killashandra would've stop being so inconsiderate and nasty throughout the whole series! I really liked the second book because for the most part she was strong, funny and only pretending to be a bitch (I loved when she told Lars - and I'm paraphrasing since I can't remember where it is in my e-book - "you didn't expect me to sit around waiting for you to come back did you?"), but in this book there was no pretense, she was just...more
Oh, man. Utterly ridiculous. Lacking a coherent plot. Not very good.
This is why I usually stick to reading the same ten sci-fi books over and over again: the first book in this trilogy, Octavia Butler's Wild Seed and Mind of My Mind, Asimov's original Foundation trilogy, Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, Speaker for the Dead and Songmaster. I must remember that if I'm looking for brain candy, it's usually better to go with the kind that I already know is delicious.
This is why I usually stick to reading the same ten sci-fi books over and over again: the first book in this trilogy, Octavia Butler's Wild Seed and Mind of My Mind, Asimov's original Foundation trilogy, Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, Speaker for the Dead and Songmaster. I must remember that if I'm looking for brain candy, it's usually better to go with the kind that I already know is delicious.
I definitely enjoyed this book. There are undoubtedly some aspects to the story that make people such as myself living in the modern world realize just how much things have changed (particularly the depiction of gender roles in sci-fi) but I never let that get in the way of my enjoying a good story.
The plot moves briskly, the characters are vibrantly fleshed out and interesting, and the story doesn't try too hard to be an epic for all time or anything like that.
This is g...more
The plot moves briskly, the characters are vibrantly fleshed out and interesting, and the story doesn't try too hard to be an epic for all time or anything like that.
This is g...more
I love that her books don't fall into a typical intro-buildup-climax-resolution storyline. They really are a slice of a person's life/world, which of course extends both before and after the spam of the book itself.
Either way, I loved the way she captured Killa's emotional shifts and disoriented the passage of time in the narrative so that just by reading it you felt the same constant underlying confusion as Killa. So clever!
Either way, I loved the way she captured Killa's emotional shifts and disoriented the passage of time in the narrative so that just by reading it you felt the same constant underlying confusion as Killa. So clever!
This is a book I had read in middle school and I figured I would reread it to see if it was worth keeping on my shelves. I love Anne McCaffery. Her Pern novels are some of my favorite fantasy reading from middle school. This book, not a Pern novel, was ok. If I remember correctly I loved the first book in this series but was not so crazy about books 2 or 3. Probably on its way to goodwill.
This was my third book read for my memorial book rereading of all Annes books. The crossover with the Ship People books was probably my favourite aspect of this book. (The Ship books or the Talents is probably what I'll reread next). My other favourite aspect is how incredibly unreliable a narrator Killa is due to the Crystal Degeneration and yet the story is still so (lawl) crystal clear to follow. Lars and Killa are pretty much my dream relationship, both independent and capable, but so mu...more
I read this immediately after finishing the previous two in the series, over a couple of days during a particularly emotional few weeks - I can't really give a proper review of it because I'm not particularly objective as a result, but it struck a chord, I completely lost myself in it, and once I finished it, I cried and cried and cried. Wonderful :)
The plot is a little disjointed, since McCaffrey has to fit ten years of events and character development into a couple hundred pages. I want to be excited about the crystal singing reforms they try to introduce, but I end up on Killashandra's side--they make sense, but they're just less exciting.
Anne McCaffrey does such an incredible job of capturing human emotions. I love that her characters are so human, and that she portrays them in such a way that you really seem to understand them.
Third book in crystal singer sereies, after returning to the planet Killashandra has been working again in the crystal planes, and finds that she has a longing that can't be fullfilled.
This was the third book in the series. I had trouble getting into the story. I enjoyed the other two books much more. How ever I did enjoy the over all story line of the series.
This was a good final book to the Crystal Singer series. Killashandra was lucky to have found a soulmate like Lars - even if she does forget it for a lot of years!
The last in the trilogy of Crystal Singer books. Again, I like the main character so much, it's hard not to like the book. This is #3 in my favorites for this series.
Basic scifi fare. Good enough characters and story, but nothing really special in the writing.
I liked this better than the second book, which was forgettable. True, it ventures off the beaten path with meeting a strange sentient crystal planet, but I for one like how she developed the protagonist along the typical personality of the crystal singers which Killashandra meets in the first book. Killa may be determined to excel, but she isn't immune to the undesirable side effects of singing. There's only so much you can write about cutting crystal, and so I liked this foray off the main ...more
The end of the series - less carefree, but new concepts that I really liked.
I love the Crystal Singer trilogy - an absolute favourite of mine :)
(to be written later)
See Crystal Singer
Awesome
fun
This is the third and final book in the trilogy. I never have cared that much for this book because the main character is quite obnoxious. She is supposed to be that way, because it demonstrates the effect that crystal cutting has on their memory and personality. However, the author got carried away with a few other things in this book, including repetition of too many elements, especially words that the characters would exclaim over and over again. A bit of a downer for me.
The longer McCaffrey follows a character, the more dislikeable that character seems to become. I liked Killashandra well enough at the beginning of this series, but despised her by the end. I have a hard time enjoying books whose protagonists are not people I would like to spend time with--especially when they're heroes, not antiheroes. Some would call that a weakness in me as a reader, I suppose; I don't think so.
Loving this book...I have read 1 and 2 but just recently discovered that this one existed as well.
Crystal Line is a good book, but I really think that it could have kept Killishandra as a happier person and that it didn't need to turn her into a harpy that cares for nothing but singing. However, this book confronts Crystal Singers biggest problem; they tend to lose their memories and their minds over the course of their long lives.
This is the third book in a series that I read every few years. The first one is Crystal Singer, then Killashandra and then this book. I really enjoy that the main character is the "best" singer. I enjoy the training aspect in the first book and the story in the second. This one is just a nice addition.
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Anne McCaffrey was born on April 1st, 1926, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at 1:30 p.m., in the hour of the Sheep, year of the Fire Tiger, sun sign Aries with Taurus rising and Leo mid-heaven (which seems to suggest an early interest in the stars).
Her parents were George Herbert McCaffrey, BA, MA PhD (Harvard), Colonel USA Army (retired), and Anne Dorothy McElroy McCaffrey, estate agent....more
More about Anne McCaffrey...
Her parents were George Herbert McCaffrey, BA, MA PhD (Harvard), Colonel USA Army (retired), and Anne Dorothy McElroy McCaffrey, estate agent....more
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