The premise of the book is that there are people who have mental "talent". There are different types of talent, and the different types allow you to do different things. So there are medical talents who can heal and emphatic talents who can sooth or manipulate people, weather talents who can predict the weather and telekinetic/teleporting talents (t&t) who can move objects and themselves. There are also varying degrees of strength of talent. All of the talents can speak to each other telepathically to some degree.

What the book also claims is that it is the presence of these talents, particularly of the t&t talents, that has allowed space travel. First, the t&t talents are used to push ships out into space and to land them. But also, it is their telepathic ability which allows long distance communication (somehow, telepathy is faster than light-speed). So they become the hinge points of the galaxy's trade and military system.

Against this backdrop, the book starts off with a young girl (Rowan) of strong t&t talent ending up an orphan and being raised to be one of the key talents in the galaxy. You follow her life and learn more about the way talents are being used, the nature of talent, and there are of course some conflict that need to be solved.

I guess I just didn't find the characters too compelling. I didn't really care about Rowan, nor did I agree with many of the choices that she made. There was some stuff at the end of the book that bothered me as well, just because it seemed sort of shallow and stereotyping of love and motherhood. There were also several allusions to sex scenes in the book that I thought were poorly done, particularly since I thought the book would have done fine without them.

Overall, it was a very Anne McCaffrey-esk book. Girl with special powers starts off under-appreciated and awkward but finally finds her place in life and ends up being a key player in the world/universe. Not that there is anything wrong with that plot, but it wasn't pulled off so well here.

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