Brian Schiebout's Reviews > Power Lines

Power Lines by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough is the second book set in the Petaybee Universe. This book continues from where the last book leads off however the company has caused more problems again. While Dr. Fiske agrees with the natives that the planet is sentient the view is not shared by his son who manages to get the company to send out their prized trouble maker Matthew Luzon to try open the world for mining. At the same time certain dissident factions exist on the world which start moving with the new actions of the company. I enjoyed the cat and mouse adventures of this story much more than I did the first book in the series as I found it easier to root for the heroes when they were spouting human decency rather than Gaia theories of being. I found the villains very convincing especially the mad pedophile prophet and the pirates turned miners. I think however that what I learned most from the book is that we should not attempt to use science or reason to try and prove a view which we already have. Matthew Luzon does it very convincingly because he merely wants facts which back up his case. We must instead look at the total picture instead of simply denying facts that we disagree with without looking into them first. If we are truly going to live in this world the way God intended us to we must inspect our beliefs and face our fears while attempting to learn how to best achieve his goals. We must be willing to face things we don't like but do so in a way that we can discover why we fear them.