Anne McCaffrey's greatest success is the lengthy "Dragonriders of Pern" science-fantasy sequence that began with the award-winning 1968 Dragonflight. In 1990 The Rowan inaugurated her less well-known "Tower and the Hive" SF series, of which this is the fifth and last. This romantic interstellar soap-opera now stars three generations of extended family, with much pairing-off and discreet sex. Leading characters all have envied Talents like telepathy or teleportation: passengers and cargo are flicked across deep space by human mind-power. The plot is tangled and episodic, major strands being the biological problems of dealing humanely with genocidal "Hiver" aliens defeated in the previous volume and solving the overpopulation problem of humanity's furry allies the Mrdini (who have names like Prtglm and Gktmglnt). Other issues come and go with soap- operatic suddenness, like the promising bad guy who plans revenge for his humiliation and then quietly turns into a good guy instead; or the assassination plot organised by a human xenophobe, which fizzles so quickly that there's no time for the thrill of suspense. The Tower and the Hive is a lightweight SF romp whose substantial back-story and large cast list are best approached through the four earlier books. --David Langford