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Manta's Gift, By Timothy Zahn
Mathew Raimey is a recent quadrapalegic in the far future. He is suffering from considerable depresssion, fueled greatly
by his extreme self absorbtion. A man called Faraday, a Living Legend, then steps into his life with a very intriguing proposition:
to get his life back, make contact as never before with a Jupiter dwelling race, and go down in the history books with the
rest of the great ones. How can he accomplish it? By being fused with a Qanska (Jupiter dwelling dolphin/manta ray creatures)
fetus, and being born into te herd of Qanska. However, it is revealed through the rest of the book that both the humans and
the Qanska have alterior motives for this re-birth. Now, self-proclaimed Manta (Mr. Raimey, for those of you that are slow
in the head *couDMgh*), must not only deal with his internal problems, and his socialization of hs life inside and outside
the herd, bt he must aslso save those who he is rapidly considering his family from both the humans and nature.
Manta's Gift is, in my opinion, a fairly good read. Certainly not on my list of all-time favorites, but it's coming pretty
close. The writing is excellent, and the story is so fast paced and intriguing that you could find yourself staying up until
three in the morning reading it. Er, that is, I mean, um, wh-who would do a silly thing like that? Er, heheh, not me, hrm,
g'hull. Anyways.... The particular storytelling style takes a bit of getting used to, as it jumps ahead from one interesting
point in Raimey/Manta's life to the next, and may seem a bit disjointed. However, I can think of no other way to tell the
story, considering that it spans the space of about 5 or 6 years in about 400 pages. Dates would have been useful, except
there was no such available outlet (such as journals), and it seems that Manta lost most of his concept of time (at least
in Terran measurements) during his many adventures. Final verdict: Very good book, I would suggest that you read it, especially
if you're into sci-fi (and if you aren't, what buisness have ye on this site?). And always remember: !yenom em eviG-SWNerd
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