Customer Reviews

To Ride Pegasus

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is an interesting group of four stories which explore the explosion of psychic "Talents" in a not-so-distant future Earth. Talents range from telepathy, telekinesis (moving objects with the mind), healing, clairvoyance, precognition, empathy, telempathy, and others. In a time when psychic phenomenon can be proven scientifically, Darrow must direct the course for the safety and use of these talents.

McCaffrey explores ideas such as: * How would "normal" humans act in a society where some people have more abilities than others? * How would society protect the Talented from wrongful legal suits? * Can the Talented police themselves?

While the stories were originally written as short stories and, as such, are somewhat disjointed, there is a logical progression with recurring characters propelling the Talented into the future.

An engrossing book, it is followed by Pegasus in Flight and Pegasus in Space. These novels are the bridge between modern Earth and the universe of "The Rowan" when the Talents help colonize space.

Every now and then you come across a book that you had to continue to read. That by the time you finished the book you were thanking the author for writing such a good book, yet cursing her for not writing a longer book. Well that is how it was for me; the problem being that I have neglected my homework over the past two days. If Anne McCaffreys other series (Pern, etc) are like this, I will have to be careful that I have no essays due then. This novel deals with a group of people who have different telepathic Talents. The strength of the book, besides the smooth writing style, is how the book was divided and the stories they told. The first story is more or less an introduction, then a generation later the other three stories tell us about Ruth and her latent but most interesting power, about the Maggie 'O tragedy and last about Amalda, a broadcasting empath. The only hitch to the book is that it was written in 1973 so for us who have been swamped be the X-Files, the lack of government conspiracy may not seem just right. Remember when you open the book to set aside a day or two.

It is a shame that To Ride Pegasus has been shadowed by the dynamic Crystal Singer, Pern, and Rowan series. Set years before the Rowan, this book is an early indicator as to how powerful a writer Anne McCaffrey is.

The reader is immediately captured by the wild plans of Henry Darrow and the discovery of psionic "Talent". This far-off future world isn't as alien as one would expect: familiar allusions and settings only make the story even more real.

What is the greatest part of the tale is that Anne McCaffrey chose to focus mainly on women protagonists. Charity, Amalda, Dorotea, Molly-they all have the grace and character that would later characterize the Rowan books. Anne's male figures aren't too bad either-there is less of that macho bashing-type of sci-fi person and more of the sensitive and logical side.

But amidst love and war come even more surprises. An incredibly powerful Gypsy woman leaves a path of death and theft across the city as she struggles with her life, which ends tragically. A hard man has his eyes set on ruling the world, and to bring that dream about he uses Amalda, a simple girl with the power to control thousands of people. And from death comes life: the newborn Dorotea has the power to find hidden Talents.

Throughout this book the reader is immensely thrilled and satisfied. To Ride Pegasus truly deserves to be given the attention other McCaffrey books get.

If you have read and liked McCaffrey's other telepath books you will be interested to learn background information about the beginning of the telepath/teleport organisation. Of course the story has aged quite a lot (the dates given in the story have already long past - the trouble with setting things in the near future!), but the concepts are still interesting.

The plot progresses through short stories - which makes it a little disjointed. Following on in this timeline are "Pegasus in flight" and "Pegasus in space" which are in standard novel form.

Although I loved the Rowan books and the Pern books with all my bookworm heart, my mind always turns back to this little two-book miniseries. This novel may seem like a history of the Rowan universe, but its really an amazing book in its own right. I beleve that To Ride Pegasus and Pegasus in Flight should be considered compulsory reading for any sci-fi or fantasy fan.

I have the Talent series in hardcover but now that "Pegasus In Flight" is available for the Kindle, I've added the beginning "Pegasus" trilogy to mine. But the spelling mistakes and missing punctuation in "To Ride Pegasus" are ruining the read for me. Periods are constantly being left out and you find yourself reading sentences that make little sense - but if you look again, you'll see a capitalized word which, if you were to put a period before it, would make two sentences that make more sense. Spelling like: `Aftar an Daffyd and others...' (instead of: After all Daffyd and others); `A winged hone' (for: A winged horse); `That's what I can Vaden' (for: That's what I call Vaden) are often interfering with the flow of the book.

Has the episodic feel of something that was serialized originally. I didn't really get to the point of "caring" about any of the characters--and some of the most interesting were either minor or were antagonists. Even the interesting ones were far from three-dimensional. It's OK if you want to read a dated attempt to treat parapsychic phenomena--but there's better treatments out there.

This great story has many many typos. Every 3 pages has a typo on it.
Examples: 'comuit' instead of 'comunit' : 'zoom' instead of 'room' : 'Dai op Owen' instead of 'Daffyd op Owen' :
'out' instead of 'cut'. There are many more errors that I corrected as I read or glossed over as nonsense.

The errors interrupt the flow of the story and make for frustration rather than entertainment.

This is one of my favorite authors. I may not buy any more of her books on Kindle because of the error rate. The price seems too high for careless work.

Sorry this review isn't about the book but about the condition of the Kindle edition. This e-book is full of misspellings, words run-together, missing punctuation, wrong words and is generally unreadable. Of course there is no recourse for a bad Kindle edition so I feel like Amazon has taken my money and cheated me. AVOID!

I read the entire Rowan series (gobbled it up I should say and I do that with all McCaffrey's books). However, somehow I had previously missed the two Pegasus books, which are truly the predecessors to the series. I ordered them from Amazon.com on 8/27, recieved them on 8/29 and had them both (see also Pegasus in Flight) read by 8/30.

They are both excellent background material about the op Owen family and how telepathy and kinetics came to be used in space.

Thank you Anne for yet another wonderful book and thank you Amazon.com for helping me find my missing readings.