All These Main Characters Are Confused

It doesn't say much for how effectively these books grabbed my attention that I'm reviewing them 2 at a time, rather than giving each its own post. I don't think that means they're bad, just not personally compelling perhaps.

Scorpio, Alex McDonough - Scorpio is actually two stories, in one book, though it feels more like two chapters in one story. Scorpio belongs to some peaceful alien race who are being exterminated by another species on their homeworld called the Hunters. The two sides basically got along until the Hunters found mysterious orbs, at which point they no longer needed the Aquayans. Scorpio, figuring he had nothing lose, infiltrated their stronghold and stole an orb, but wound up transported to Earth. Avignon during the papacy of Clement VI, to be exact. He meets a spirited young Jewish girl named Leah, and they eventually work together to a) try and decipher the orb's powers, and b) prove her father's innocence in the death of one of the Cardinals.

In the second story, our heroes have fled the Hunters only to land in Elizabethan England, where things play out much the same. Avoid the Hunters, try and find someone who can help them understand the orb, avoid people who might try and harm Scorpio for looking so inhuman. That story ends with them again fleeing to some new time.

Which is the basic problem with the book. The plots of both halves are largely the same, so how interesting they are depends on how much you care about either of the historical settings. Neither one is terribly interesting to me, so it doesn't sell it. Plus, as both stories are around 160-180 pages, I'm not sure how in-depth of a look at these times the reader gets. I learned some things, but I wasn't particularly knowledgeable about the locales to begin with.

One thing I don't understand pertains to the Hunters' biology. While the Aquay are amphibious, needing to immerse themselves in water periodically, the Hunters actually find water dangerous. It burns them. Scorpio tends to use this to his advantage, by hiding the orb in bodies of water. Except the Hunters have an orb that lets them traverse time and space. Why can't they use it to shield themselves from water? That's beyond its abilities?

A Gift from Earth, Larry Niven - This is set on a world where the only place habitable by humans is a roughly California-sized plateau that rises above the noxious, lead-melting mists that encircle the rest of the planet. Because only one probe scouted the planet, the settlers didn't realize the habitable area was so limited until they landed. At which point the crew of the ship devised a set of laws which placed them at the top and forced the settlers coming out of stasis to sign. . . or die. The story occurs a few centuries later, but things haven't much changed, and the way things work is pretty much any crime results is death, whereupon all usable organs are taken and stored for those who need them. Mostly the crew's descendants, even if they just want to extend their already long lives, though colonists can get transplants in dire enough situations. There is a small resistance, but they're ineffective.

A package arrives from Earth that could change everything, and so the law enforcement round up every resistance person they can get, raiding a large get-together. The only partygoer who escapes is one Matt Keller, who isn't even a member of the group. Just a guy who met an old friend and agreed to come to a party. After some indecision, Matt opts to try and rescue some of them, and it's fortunate he figures out he has a specific psychic power, because he sure as hell didn't have a plan. Things do wind up changing at the end, and Matt finds himself drawn into the new politics because, well out of guilt, maybe.

I was actually really enjoying this right until the last few pages. Then there's a scene where Matt laments that his particular mutation will probably kill his chances of reproducing. Then he realizes out he can generate the exact opposite response as well, which bothers me on two levels. One, it suggests Matt may try and use his power to nudge women into sleeping with him, since he can make himself appear to be more inexplicably fascinating than the Dos Equis World's Most Interesting Man. Creepy. Secondly, while it is possible his mutation would have that sort of beneficial effect on his chances of passing on his genetics, it's not terribly likely. Most mutations don't improve an individual's survival chances. They're either too small a change to matter, or they screw up something important to survival and get the individual killed.

Outside of that, I generally liked Matt. He didn't get involved in this out of some high-minded ideal, but simply because he wanted to help some friends, which is a motivation I'm familiar with. Ideals are fine, but can sometimes lead to the people involved being overlooked. I don't know if Niven feels the same way, but at least some of the Sons of the Earth in this story seem to regard everyone in their organization as expendable, and people to only have meaning if they're helping. When Matt says he has no interest in some of their schemes, here they go with the berating, browbeating, questioning of his courage (after he saved their asses, no less), then they tell him to skedaddle while they plan. They're jerks.

Jerks who haven't thought out the repercussions of their goals, if their conversation with the biggest big wig is anything to go by. I suppose that makes sense, if they were realistically assessing their chances prior to Keller's involvement. They'd gotten nowhere in their plans for years, why bother to contemplate how they'd implement those plans if they had the chance?

It's interesting that one of the concerns is that if they stop executing people for most every crime and harvesting their organs, there won't be a deterrent to crime. But at one point in the story the organ banks are described as full, it's clearly not that much of a deterrent. If nothing else, people are always going to think they can get away with stuff, regardless of the punishment if they're caught.