Customer Reviews

Sunderlies Seeking: Ghatten's Gambit #1 (Ghatti's Tale)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A must read for anyone who enjoyed "The Ghatti's Tale" trilogy or someone looking for something new and different.

Starting sixteen years after "Exiles' Return", Doyce Marborn's and Jenret Wycherley's marrage is on shakey ground. On their twins, Diccon and Jenneth, sixteeth birthday, Doyce resigns as Seeker General and announces she will join her husband and children on their trip to Sunderlies.

The Sunderlies: land of exiled outlaws and those seeking a new life. This land is very different from mainland Canderis.

As the large party travels to port to leave for the Sunderlies, there are mishaps. Accidents or sabotage? Questions abond. While waiting for the ship to be readied, the twins are Chosen by young twin Ghatten. Diccon by Kwee and Jenneth by fat, shy Pw'eek.

On the sea trip to the Sunderlies, trouble strikes. Jenneth and Pw'eek are sweept overboard during a storm.

But this is only the tip of Greeno's masterpiece. For the Whycherley trade in the Sunderlies is being drained, very slightly, of its funds. There are old wrongs that fanatics feel must be revenged. Plus, there is political intrique to boot. The question becomes who will survive the voyage.

Greeno does a wonderful job of filling story with familiar chacters from the first trilogy and a slew of new characters from the Sunderlies.

I really enjoyed this book. I read the first three Seeker books several years ago and they are certainly necessary to understand this one. Many of the same characters appear and she doesn't devote much space to background history. While I loved the Ghatti's Tail trilogy, I always felt that they started off very slow. This book does not--I was happy to jump right into the story for once.

Although it took me quite some time to pick up the first Ghatti's Tale, I was just as hooked as my referral said I'd be. With the ending of the series, I was wondering if she'd re-visit the world again, and continue to explore the depth of the Seeker Bonds. To my relief & reading enjoyment, she has. This book had me hooked from start to finish. As a life-long fan of M. Z.Bradley's "Darkover" & A. McCaffrey's "Pern" series, I'm always glad to read of 'realistic' psionic talents. I can't wait until "Ghatten's Gambit" #2 comes out!

Gayle Greeno has outdone herself in this book. It is a real page-turner! We enjoyed the first three books, the Gatti trilogy, but the first Gatten book is the best yet of the series. Doyce has retired from position as Seeker General and accompanies her husband and children on a trip to the Sunderlies. On the way to the seaport to catch their ship to the Sunderlies, it becomes apparent that someone is trying to sabotage their trip. On the sea, there are further problems which include one of Doyce and Jenret's twins and her bond being swept off of the ship in a great storm. There is intrigue all through the book and the author doesn't give away who are the good guys and who are the bad guys until the end of the book.

This book was wonderful. I loved the first series, but in this one she seemed to have done the best. The plot is gripping and funny, while at the same time serious. If you are reading this, I definetly reccomend buying the book now.

This book is one of Greeno's best works yet. It's part of an exciting series that you just can't put down. You are magically transported to a world of telepathic cats, or better known as ghattis. Their job, along with their human bondmate, seek out the truth in all situations and administer the correct punishment if needed. This time, Joyce (human bondmate of Khar'pern) and her family with their bondmate ghattis find themselves on a vacation to the exotic continent called the Sunderlies. Instead of a vacation, they end up solving a mystery of a scandalas shipping operation and of a girl that fell overboard while they were heading to the Sunderlies. I just have to say, read this book and take part in the adventure and danger that will keep you occupied for hours and hours.

It starts off slowly as there's so much that has happened between the end of the last series and this one, but if you plough through it, it gets better. Not as good as the first three books, but still a worthwhile read as you are already involved with the characters.

I had no idea that there was a second triology. I just happened to be at the bookstore and saw it. I read the whole book the next day, I couldn't put it down. There were things that were alluded to throught the book and it was suspenseful not knowing when they were going to happen. The new addition of characters really fit in with the ones we've come to know and love. I can't barely wait to read the second book of this triology.

"Seeking" is a perfect keyword for this long and complex book, as most of it is concerned with two searches--one for the truth, the other for a missing person. It's been 16 years since we last saw Doyce Marbun and her ghatta-bond Khar'pen; Doyce is now married to Jenret Wycherley, the father of her twins (Jennet, the girl, and Diccon, the boy, both of whom are Resonants, or telepaths, and look forward to careers as Seekers), and is Seeker-General of her order, but is troubled by the idea that her marriage may be foundering and that she hasn't spent enough time with her growing children. Now 55 (Khar is well over 20--ghatti apparently live longer than their Terran-feline counterparts), she decides to make one last try at mending her personal affairs and resigns her office just as Jenret is assembling a company to voyage south to the Sunderlies, where his merchant family has interests. Besides Doyce, Khar, the twins, and Jenret's own ghatt Rawn, the group includes Arras Muscadeine, the Marchmontian guardsman we first met in Mindspeaker's Call (Ghatti's Tale) (now married to Doyce's sister Francie), and his 12-year-old son Harry; Honoria Wijnnobel, Jenret's "right hand at the mercantile," whom he's been pursuing for some time; Bard Ambwasali, a retired Seeker, with his young wife Lindy and their seven-year-old daughter Byrlyn (whom he's eager to introduce to his heritage, his father having come from the inland plains as a boy), and Bard's ghatt M'wa; Davvy McNaught, the young eumedico who loves Lindy; two Seekers, Theo and his cousin Holly, and their ghattas, Khar's daughters, Khim and P'roul. While waiting for their ship in Windle Port, they acquire two new members when they unexpectedly encounter a pair of sister ghatten who Bond with the twins, plump Pw'eek choosing Jennet and Kwee Diccon.

The Sunderlies--which may or may not occupy the same continent as the countries of Canderis and Marchmont--are Methuen's answer to 18th- and 19th-C. Australia: originally a penal colony, more recently settled by hard-working, honest immigrants eager to better their lives. (Bard's people, however, bear a distinct resemblance to certain cattle-raising African tribes.) En route there, a storm washes Jennet and Pw'eek overboard, and Diccon, accompanied by Bard, Davvy, and Kwee, steals a ship's boat and sets off in search of them. The rest of the party, reaching the port of Samranth, soon discover that something very strange is going on at the office of Jenret's family's agent. As the story proceeds, it becomes evident that no one--not Honoria, nor agent Ozer Oordbeck, nor the hospitable pillow-seller Monsvaert, nor the Governor herself--is quite what they seem to be. (And the same proves true of at least two of the people Jennet and Diccon encounter on their own separate adventure.) Yet Greeno manages to keep her large cast and various subplots straight and bring everything to a thrilling and satisfying conclusion.

Besides Diccon, mad to find his sister, there are several young people here who are clearly destined for great things in future: Harry, Byrlyn, and the two street urchins, Smir and his sister Siri, who come up with a daring scheme to rescue Oordbeck's little daughter and nephew after they're kidnapped out of his home; Dannae, the young Shepherd (the first female priest of the Lady whom Canderisians worship); Davvy and Theo. Perhaps the most outstanding character of all is little Pw'eek, who despite a pleasing plumpness and a poor self-image, proves herself valiant, resilient, and resolute after she and Jennet are separated at sea. The spine logo describes the book as fantasy, but it's clearly sf, like Anne McCaffrey's Pern series: besides some remains of technology (and reintroductions of it, like running water), there's specific mention of a spacecraft in which many of the original colonists fled the planet. Though the apparently wholesale transfer of Terran flora and fauna to Methuen may be distracting (corn and apples are raised on Canderisian farms, and besides domestic Earth beasts such as cats, dogs, cattle, and horses, a large roster of wild ones also live on the planet), the society Greeno imagines is sufficiently unfamiliar to be genuinely interesting, and the ghatti, as always, are a delight. While not fast-moving, the book is worth your persistence and should satisfy the patient reader in the end.

Although I love the ghatti series, this generation of characters just isn't as interesting. Diccon doesn't seem to do much and Jenneth really annoyed me...having her lose her memory was also cliched and one would think her Bondmate would still be able to reach her. Let's hope the characters grow up a bit more and acquire some dimension in future books