Rating: WARTY!
Given that this was the first in the "The Dream healers" series, I should have known better, but I was stupid. I admit it. At least it wasn't first person, but neither was it remotely original.
The story was about this university on this planet which is open to a variety of aliens all of which are based heavily on humans and/or human mythology and/or Earth animal life. There was nothing remotely new or inventive here. It was all lowest common denominator sort of stuff. naturally you have to make your aliens relatable (or do you?!), but you can't just put an animal skin on a human and pretend it's an alien, and that's all that was attempted here.
The aliens even favor Earth foods - specifically what's commonly found in North America - and they have human foibles and motives and behaviors. The novel centers around (or should i say centaurs around) the relationship between this centaur being and this animal being, but if no one told you what their species was, you woudl assume human from the outset - that's how un-alien they were.
Centaurs make zero sense and are absurd from the off, and it's especially absurd when this one - a rarity, shows up on this planet with stronger gravity than it's used to apparently without any acclimitization, and comes promptly a cropper because of it. this tells me either the individual is stupid or the people who sent it are morons. Either way it doesn't bode well for the story especially when the centaur seems to be completely awed by any technology it encounters.
Maybe its problem is that people don't take it seriously. At one point, and I am not making this up, the centaur's course advisor says to it, without a shade of humor or irony, “so you don’t have an indefinite period to horse around.” If the story had been a comedy or a parody that would have been funny, but it isn't. It's supposed to be serious. Clearly the author is writing this without putting a shred of thought into it. Why would I want to read a whole series like this? I wouldn't. I don't even want to read this one. Done with book and with author.
