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Power Lines
Power Lines
Nov 11, 2025 6:15 PM

Author:Anne McCaffrey,Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Power Lines

The miraculous and mysterious world of Petaybee was to be investigated. No-one - no-one outside Petaybee, that is - could believe that the planet was a living, breathing sentient entity, that every plant and animal was in symbiotic communication with the spirit of the Petaybean world. Matthew Luzon was one of the investigators, an arrogant, wily, manipulative man who didn't believe there was anything in the universe that couldn't be controlled by hard scientific methods. His plan was to crush Petaybee, strip it of its mineral assets, and subdue or destroy the inhabitants.

Major Yanaba Maddock - who had been sent to Petaybee to die, but who now understood its secretive curative powers - with the help of Sean Shongili, Clodagh, and all the gifted ones of Kilcoole, was determined to fight for their world.

It was a battle in which every human, every plant, and every secretive telepathic creature - most especially the famous orange felines of Petaybee - was to be put at risk. Luzon was determined to destroy them - whatever the cost.

Reviews

Anne McCaffrey, one of the queens of science fiction, knows exactly how to give her public what it wants.

—— The Times

An amazing conception, one that will make you want to turn back and start again the moment you have finished... the writing is as taught and thrilling as Kennedy's prose always is and there is her usual wry laughter chuckling within it all

—— Joan Bakewell , New Statesman

This is a masterful novel, imaginatively crafted, shaped by big, precisely articulated emotion

—— The Times

Kennedy is a fine stylist and single passages are exquisite

—— Financial Times

Offers the pleasures of a work in which form and content dovetail with extraordinary skill, and in which narrative tricks are utilised to enlarge on the theme of deception rather than for the sake of tricksiness itself

—— Edmund Gordon , Sunday Times

It displays all the verbal artistry and emotional force of its predecessor, burrowing deep into the minds of its intense central characters

—— Amber Pearson , Daily Mail

The more mysterious elements of the novel's structure...make the book a giddy pleasure

—— Anthony Cummins , Literary Review

An impressive novel

—— Keith Miller , Daily Telegraph

If you like Kennedy's work, with its cool wit, spare stylishness, sharp sense of place and world-worn tenderness, then you'll find all those attributes here

—— Keith Miller , Independent on Sunday

Always a bold writer, she observes the world with a refreshingly skewed intelligence, and her well-known darkness, sometimes verging on morbidity, is always leavened with wit and humour. She also writes beautifully

—— Guardian

An amazing conception, one that will make you want to turn back and start again the moment you have finished...the writing is as taut and thrilling as Kennedy's prose always is and there is her usual wry laughter chuckling within it all

—— Joan Bakewell , New Statesman, Books of the Year

Complex and complicated in the very best way

—— Erica Wagner , The Times, Books of the Year

This woman is a profound writer

—— Richard Ford

Kennedy is as disconcertingly accurate at tenderness as at wildness... A passionate writer, on the edge and at risk

—— New York Times Book Review

Kennedy writes with flaying precision about the things we won't often admit to ourselves, let alone speak aloud

—— Daily Mail

A virtuoso of prose. Her phrasing is fine-tuned and supple to the highest degree: intuitive and subtle about the multifarious sensations of being alive

—— London Review of Books

One of the most brilliant writers of her generation.

—— Sunday Telegraph

Kennedy's sixth novel might move by turns through mystery, love story and comedy of shipboard manners, but its central subject is the transgressive, near-sexual pleasure of passing off fiction as fact

—— New Statesman

A tricksy, dazzlingly playful novel from this exhilarating Scottish author

—— Metro

The story takes on a dual purpose, questioning the reader’s appreciation of what is truth and what is deception

—— Big Issue

Beth’s compulsive self-examination makes this novel as hard to turn away from as it is unsettling to read

—— Herald

She observes the world with a refreshingly skewed intelligence, and her well-known darkness is always leavened with wit and humour

—— Carol Birch , Guardian

It may take a while to find your land-legs after reading Kennedy, but the trip will have been well worth the effort

—— Independent

A stylistically experimental writer, Kennedy reveals the inner workings of those who peddle stories for a living

—— Emma Hagestadt , Independent and i

This is the magazine of the National Autistic Society: the review is written by someone with Asperger's Syndrome. "This book is a good murder mystery story but a better description of how th mind of a different person with some kind of special need looks upon how things work and come about.

—— Communication

This startlingly original story . . . Has surprised everyone-not least the author.The book is funny, gripping, sad and unstintingly entertaining.

—— The Age

So if you're interested in solving mysteries and want to learn about autism in children, you'll love this book

—— Carlisle News and Star

A triumph from first page to last . . . Haddon's prose is empathetic and you cannot help but be drawn into young Christpher's world

—— Dundee Evening Telegraph and Post

This is a unique book written from the perspective of a unique character . . . It is very easy to read and would satisfy anyone from eight to 88

—— The Teacher

I found this book highly entertaining and enthralling though it was a bit sad at times.

—— Books for Keeps
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