Rowan Tree and Red Thread

This is another book I've been reading in installments from DailyLit. It's a fix-up, edited by Eric Flint for Baen Books, of several short stories of Telzey Amberdon, a young girl with amazing psionic powers. Schmitz is famous for his Hub stories, and the ones contained in this collection are set in the Hub. I read this on passing recommendations from friends in Alarums & Excursion, and enjoyed it to a point. I did have a problem with the basic character of Telzey as someone altogether too calm and collected for her age as well as amazingly powerful. I never got the impression she was really under any threat despite her many adventures. Her rather cavalier approach to mental health and the privacy of one's own thoughts turned me off too, particularly as this was never really addressed in the stories. Her telepathy and related powers seemed more plot devices than the central concerns of the stories and that disappointed me.

Nonetheless there are some exciting adventures in the book, and the various characters around Telzey are better drawn. The curious political set-up of the Hub isn't all that clear from this book, which might entice me read more of Schmitz's work but for the moment I'm take a break from Telzey.