Thursday, October 13, 2016

Review: Hair Power by Piers Anthony



HAIR POWER
by Piers Anthony
Dreaming Big Publications
YA Science Fiction
128 pages




Terminal cancer patient, Quiti, walks into an abandoned building planning on taking her life. 

Instead, she encounters a telepathic ball of hair that insists it is an alien seeking to facilitate diplomatic communication on Earth. 

Quiti assumes it is all a hallucination conjured up by her brain tumor. 

Because of this assumption, when she saves the alien’s life and it insists on doing Quiti a favor in return, she only asks for her hair back. She soon discovers, however, that the creature’s gift extends much further than her new locks that can change color with a thought. As her powers grow and her deadly illness goes into remission, Quiti quickly realizes that there are those that would want to use her for her abilities and is forced to leave behind everything that she knew. 

Will this blessing curse her to a life on the run, or does the mysterious hairball have more in store for her? 

Piers Anthony, critically acclaimed author of the New York Times bestselling Xanth series, brings together humor and adventure in this original story of loyalty, friendship, extraordinary powers, and hair.




MY TIDBITS


With a very unique surmise, this tale borders on quirky while maintaining serious undertones which leave reader thinking long after the book is set down.

Quiti is dying of cancer and is about to simply give up on life. When a hallucination leads her to assist a talking hair ball--one that claims to want to grant her one wish--she's sure she's lost her mind. But it's exactly this wish which is about to change her life around.

This was the first time I've read a book by Piers Anthony, and it won't be my last. The writing style is a bit choppy, and  the scene descriptions and character depth are sometimes left a bit shallow. But all of it is more than adequate for this book. Through a clever and somewhat curious plot, the author creates an easy to read, suspenseful adventure, while placing some very basic questions about life.

There's a little bit of humor, a sense of adventure and just the right amount of tension to make it impossible to set the book down. The characters each have their own backgrounds and the situations are kept just real enough to make them feel believable. The only thing which didn't quite fit was Quiti's age. She's supposedly around twenty, but her character came across younger at times.

This is a lovely read for science fiction fans and is sure to hook those who like a lot of thought with a bit of weird thrown in.


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