Cat Scratch Fever (Mass Market Paperback)

by Tara K. Harper (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Tsia had dreamed all her life of becoming a guide, attuned to her world through a telepathic gate to another lifeform. At last, she took the guide virus that would mutate her body to create the gate she so desperately craved. But the lifeform her body took was the one lifeform forbidden--the felines, who had scouted the planet for the First Droppers and, in exchange, been promised their freedom forever from human domination. By laws of the Guide Guild and the First-Landing Pact, she could never call to the cats, never speak with them, never approach them. But then capture and imprisonment, torture and slavery took the place of an empty future. Suddenly Tsia's only hope lay with her gate--and once she had touched the cats, there would be no turning back...


From the Inside Flap
Tsia had dreamed all her life of becoming a guide, attuned to her world through a telepathic gate to another lifeform. At last, she took the guide virus that would mutate her body to create the gate she so desperately craved. But the lifeform her body took was the one lifeform forbidden--the felines, who had scouted the planet for the First Droppers and, in exchange, been promised their freedom forever from human domination. By laws of the Guide Guild and the First-Landing Pact, she could never call to the cats, never speak with them, never approach them. But then capture and imprisonment, torture and slavery took the place of an empty future. Suddenly Tsia's only hope lay with her gate--and once she had touched the cats, there would be no turning back...

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: Del Rey; 1st edition (April 2, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345380517
• ISBN-13: 978-0345380517
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #191,953 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A glimpse of life, October 9, 2000

By	"darkramoth" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

"Cat Scratch Fever" is the start of Harper's second major series. This series is set in a colonized world filled with a dazzling array of technology and opportunities. And amidst a society that we can only dream of now, an elemental earthy force of life and death still rules. The main character starts off the book, dragging the reader into her predicaments one by one, leading down the path to her own destruction or salvation.

I absolutely love Tara K. Harper's books. This was the first book I read, though it's her second series. There is a sequel to this already in print, titled "Cataract" and a third book is due any time. The emotion and action that Harper puts into her books and into her characters, and the way she presented it to me as a reader, gripped me by the mind and the heart and would not let go. I suggest this book to as many people as I can, everyone who is interested not only in scifi and technology, but in the bare basics of survival in a ruthless and cut-throat society. When you're nothing but a number, where is freedom. Thick throughout this book is a heavy dose of symbolism related to slavery of one's mind, heart, emotions and body.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars HORRIBLE book, May 24, 2006

By	Emily Clark "UnicornEmily" (Hong Kong, China) - See all my reviews

I read this book about a decade ago, and it says a lot that after nine or ten years, I'm still filled with revulsion at the thought of it. The entire first third of the book is about a woman being enslaved and tortured psychologically in horrifying ways, and there is not a hint of hope in it until halfway through. And even after that, all the main character can seem to do is angst about how miserable she'd been in the first half of the book! I have no idea why I finished it -- oh, wait, yes I do, I was on a ten-hour flight and had nothing else to do -- but I wish I'd never picked it up in the first place. Avoid this book like the plague.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Caterrific, August 21, 2001

By A Customer

Cat Scratch Fever was the first of Tara Harpers books I read and it sold me on her as an author. In Cat Scratch fever we learn about the psycic links between the colonists and the animals and the promise to the cats. Tsia wants one of the animal links unfortunately hers is to the cats. She avoids using her link and does not want to lose it because of the other benefits to the link. Then Tsia gets into trouble and her link to the cats is helpful and the cats seem to welcome her into their world.