Desperate circumstances forced Lunzie Mespil, Healer (a combination of doctor and psychiatrist) to abandon the starship on which she was a passenger. Since she made it to a lifeboat, Lunzie is not too worried; she will spend a month or two in cryogenic stasis awaiting inevitable rescue, and then proceed with her life. Only it's not a month or two. Lunzie waits for sixty-two years before she is finally picked up. How Lunzie deals with being reborn to a world she never made, a world that has grown strangely dark and dangerous during her long sleep, is the story of The Death of Sleep.
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Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal
YA-- Like Dan Davis in Heinlein's Door into Summer (Ballantine, 1986), Lunzie Mespil is a victim of cryogenic sleep and future shock. On three separate occasions following a deep-space disaster, she is placed in suspended animation totaling almost 90 years while awaiting rescue. Like Ripley in the film Aliens , she has lost not just her friends and loved ones, but everything familiar to her. Her story is a study of struggle against adversity as she tries to put her life back together. Because her medical knowledge is obsolete, Lunzie returns to school and becomes the medical officer on an exploratory vessel for the Federation of Sentient Planets. While routinely surveying the prehistoric life of the planet Ireta, she is caught in the middle of a violent racial mutiny. While not as strong a book as The Ship Who Sang (Ballantine, 1976) or most of the "Pern" novels, McCaffrey has created a feisty, likable character in Lunzie Mespil. This well-written yarn can stand alone, but it works best if read with Dinosaur Planet (1978), Dinosaur Planet Survivors (1984, both Ballantine), and Sassinak (Baen, 1990). --John Lawson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Anne McCaffrey is the author of the much loved Dragonriders of Pern series and lives in Ireland. Jody Lynn Nye is the author of Mythology 101, a series of humorous fantasies and lives in Chicago.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I enjoyed it.,
By Robin Sinex (Columbia, MD) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Death of Sleep (Mass Market Paperback)
Other reviewers may not have liked this book, but Mom & I both enjoyed it. Great concept, and it leaves things open for GENERATION WARRIORS to continue the story. Lunzie's frustration over being in cold sleep so often adds to the story tension, leading the reader to wonder not only if she will succeed or fail in what she does, but if she'll find herself in cold sleep again, and have to re-certify herself as a doctor -- again. Deals with issues that most authors may have forgotten about, such as having to get updated in technological and medical advances that occurred while she was asleep, and the whole issue of back pay.
12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Where's the sequel?,
This review is from: Death of Sleep (Mass Market Paperback)
This book suffers from the ills of collaborative efforts. Although I don't know any of the details of the arrangement between McCaffrey and Nye, I'd guess that Nye wrote the book based on McCaffrey's concept. Half way through the book I began to wonder if this was going to be another of those multi-volume stories where seeds planted in the first book bear fruit but are never answered six or ten books later. If intended to be a one volume book, as another review has pointed out, this one has no ending. Nothing gets resolved; very little is learned; the main character has not changed in any remarkable way; and the story is not over.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Lamest . . . Plot . . . Ever (Warning, review contains spoilers!),
By
This review is from: Death of Sleep (Mass Market Paperback)
The only reason I can find for anybody finishing this book is if they promised somebody they would. Why do I say that? Because the story, as told, makes absolutely NO sense.
Lunzie, our heroine goes off to make money so she can return for her daughter and emigrate from Earth. Her ship has an accident, and she spends sixty years in cold sleep. After her lifepod is picked up, she then spends the next two years desperately trying to find and contact her daughter. She succeeds and makes arrangements to meet her daughter on Earth. To get there, she signs on as a doctor on a luxury cruise liner. The liner has a disaster.(Think _Titanic_) Many passengers and crew escape and are rescued, but Lunzie gets another ten years in cold sleep awaiting help. After she's revived (again) she finally reaches Earth, only to find a tearful "Why did you change your mind?" message from her daughter. At that point, the book completely melted down. 1. Lunzie was CREW on the liner. If some escaped and others didn't, did the words "missing and presumed dead" never occur to anybody, either the characters OR the authors? 2. Daughter is almost certainly alive at age eighty-five, in an era of 120-year-plus lifespans. Lunzie makes absolutely NO further effort to contact her daughter or even find out where she is. This makes, as I said, NO sense. A friend of mine once, when asked what he thought of Anne McCaffrey as a writer, told me he avoided her books because they were so violent. When I asked him, in disbelief, why he said that, he replied: "Because she does so much violence to logic and common sense." I now know *EXACTLY* how he felt, and why. Avoid this one at all costs.
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