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    The Rowan
    The Rowan
    The Rowan
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Rowan

    Written by Anne McCaffrey

    Narrated by Jean Reed Bahle

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Told in the timeless style of Anne McCaffrey, The Rowan is the first installment in a wonderful trilogy. This is sci-fi at its best: a contemporary love story as well as an engrossing view of our world in the future.

    The kinetically gifted, trained in mind/machine gestalt, are the most valued citizens of the Nine Star League. Using mental powers alone, these few Prime Talents transport ships, cargo and people between Earth's Moon, Mars' Demos and Jupiter's Callisto.

    An orphaned young girl, simply called The Rowan, is discovered to have superior telepathic potential and is trained to become Prime Talent on Callisto. After years of self-sacrificing dedication to her position, The Rowan intercepts an urgent mental call from Jeff Raven, a young Prime Talent on distant Deneb. She convinces the other Primes to merge their powers with hers to help fight off an attack by invading aliens. Her growing relationship with Jeff gives her the courage to break her status-imposed isolation, and choose the more rewarding world of love and family.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJan 25, 2007
    ISBN9781423330318
    The Rowan
    Author

    Anne McCaffrey

    Anne McCaffrey, a multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner, was one of the world's most beloved and bestselling science fiction and fantasy writers. She is known for her hugely successful Dragonriders of Pern books, as well as the fantasy series that she cowrote with Elizabeth A. Scarborough that began with Acorna: The Unicorn Girl.

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    Reviews for The Rowan

    4/5

    714 ratings26 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I first read this trilogy when I was 22, and listening to it 33 years later, it’s even better?
    • 3/5
      Decided to reread these books because I never got around to the last one. I liked them back when I was a teenager, but I'm not entirely sure why now. Maybe because when I was reading instead of listening, I could skip over the exposition. The story is engaging enough, but I don't remember McCaffrey being so 'wordy' back then. There's a little too much time in the following books spent on call-backs and reminders of previous events, and the constant inane chatter and pep talks between characters gets a little old after a while. The whole series could probably have been cut down to two or three books, if they didn't have so much filler. Still a decent series, but really not the best of the genre.
    • 4/5
      a enticeing begenning to a great series. a very interesting version of l post diasprra series
    • 4/5
      Not bad, not her best. Simple, uncomplicated read.
    • 2/5
      The Rowan is an orphaned girl with incredible psychic power and a cute little psychic pet. Oh the pain she suffers from being an orphan! Oh the oppression of being so powerful! Oh the agony of no one understanding your Speshulness!
    • 3/5
      McCaffrey has soul. Her characters always realize they're incomplete - and find ways to become more complete. The angst always makes me cry.
    • 5/5
      Excellent!!! Exactly as I remember it. I love this reader... She's awesome!
    • 4/5
      Having reread most of McCaffrey's Pern books earlier this year, I was intrigued when I saw this audiobook, first in a previously unknown to me series, available in Audible's Plus catalog.

      Enjoyable enough though I felt that the world building wasn't as good as in the Pern series.
    • 4/5
      This is part of the Talented universe. I enjoyed the storyline. The main reason for this is because the main character, Rowan, grows up and changes personality due to a trauma. The writing is quite believable. Then as the story moves forward she continues to change according to interAction with people and events.
    • 2/5
      Easy reading, but not very interesting. This is the story of a girl on a distant planet, as a toddler the only survivor of a mudslide that buries her entire mining colony. She is found because she is an unusually strong "Talent". It is explained that humankind has been able to expand from Earth mainly due to the discovered superpowers of some percentage of the population, people who are capable of staggering feats of mental power- they can move ships many light years through space with the aid of machines, and can communicate telepathically over light years.The book then traces The Rowan's life through adolescence and into adulthood, when another extremely powerful Talent emerges from a distant colony. Jeff and the Rowan fall in love immediately, as Jeff helps her to heal from her childhood trauma. Much of the last half of the book is larded with a frankly boring description of their courtship and life together. Nothing happens for 100 pages while they're exchanging syrupy love messages, which feel a bit unearned because they fell in love so quickly. Finally, the book ends with some mortal peril, but the Talents are basically so ridiculously powerful that there's not even much suspense.I guess this is the first book in the Tower and Hive Series, so maybe it gets more interesting, but I won't be finding out.
    • 3/5
      A good, strictly sci-fi Anne McCaffery with some well-written women lead characters. The Rowan, of course, is our main protagonist, and we see her from childhood through into adulthood. The story takes place in a future time when Earth's inhabitants have colonized planets and move not through engine power but through the vast abilities of telepaths. She is found after a mudslide because her mind will not stop shouting, and the Prime (the primary telepath of her planet) insists on rescuing her. This Prime is also a doozy of a character and is created for that purpose: not every female character can be likeable! Contrast her with the Rowan's primary caregiver, and some snippy cousins, and you have a good human basis for this sci-fi story.Once the Rowan grows into adulthood, however, the story navigates in and around and through this interstellar travel, an invasion by an alien species, and a love story between equals. I did have to shake my head at McCaffery's /the Rowan's statement that she "never felt more womanly" than after she gave birth, but there you have it. Definitely a good and decent read and insight into a future of possibilities.
    • 4/5
      I first read this series in middle or high school, and while I couldn't remember much of the plot I recall enjoying it immensely. So when I saw this for $2 in a used bookstore the other day, I couldn't resist picking it up. It's a fast, engaging read with beautifully developed characters. I love the mechanics of space travel and teleportation as well. It's also possible that the nostalgia of reading something I haven't looked at in ages made it even more enjoyable. Definitely curious to read the whole series this time around, since I only ever made it through the first three when I was younger.
    • 1/5
      Oh lord. I liked this book when I was a kid, but re-reading as an adult, the gender politics is pretty much intolerable.
    • 4/5
      What a weird book. I kind of loved it? Scifi romance with telepathy. The pregnancy stuff was weird, though.
    • 4/5
      The Rowan was the sole survivor of a mudslide and she was found because she was a strong telepath. When she grew up she used her mental powers to send cargo loads between the inhabited planets. However, her talents also distanced her from ordinary people. Then a voice appeared in her mind and it was that of a male telepath (Jeff Raven) whose planet was threatened. The Rowan helped Jeff to save his planet and then fell in love with him.It's an excellent story of what could happen if psychic powers really do exist.
    • 3/5
      The Rowan by Anne McCaffery begins her series on people with paranormal abilities combined with spaceflight. Mankind proves the ability of people to use telekenesis, telepathy, and precognition and then discovers who has those abilities on a systematic basis. Further, mankind creates generators that amplify the ability of these talents. Occasionally a person has such immense ability, they can move an entire spaceship, not only into space, but also to neighboring stars. At the start of the book, there is a small network of "primes", as these special talents are called, linking together Earth, Procyon, Capella, and Altair with passenger and cargo shipments. It is on Altair, that our heroine, the Rowan is born. The Rowan's growth from a frightened three-year-old who lost her parents in an accident into the full growth of her talent occupies the rest of the book. It covers twenty years of her life and includes the normal growing pains and adult issues.I like the long scope of the book and the strong characters depicted within it. Some of the minor characters are more caricatures. Some of the dialogue is trite or repetitious--something I just noted while listening to the book on tape. When I first read the book 20+ years ago, I did not notice that then.I also like the combination of paranormals with space travel--a good idea that has only been executed a few times in the thousands of science fiction books I've read. Perhaps Alfred Bester's book, "The Stars My Destination" did it better. The book is the first in a series of five books, so be prepared to be hooked.I give the book three stars.
    • 5/5
      A natural disaster on Altair has left a three-year-old girl the lone survivor of The Rowan Mining Company’s base camp. When her mental cries reach every telepath on the planet a search for her becomes a race against time. She was trapped in a hopper under a landslide of mud. No food, no water, no comfort and running out of air. The trauma has left her no memory of her previous life, so she becomes a ward of the planet Altair and is known as The Rowan. The Rowan grows up a powerful telepath/telekinetic and it’s inevitable she will become one of the few Primes of FT&T (Federated Telepath & Telekinetic).Her life is a lonely one until she meets Jeff Raven, a Wild Talent from a far flung colony on Deneb VIII. Together they face the alien invaders pummeling his planet and then they begin a life together. Sounds easy, right? Oh, no…nothing is ever easy for a Prime, let alone two.Picking up hundreds of years after the original Talents series, The Rowan begins a new era for FT&T. Well-written with a fast pace the story of the Rowan’s life flows by smoothly. An orphan and a powerful T-1 the Rowan is an unusual child and leads an interesting, if lonely, life. I was happy for her when Jeff entered the picture. He’s quite the character and even more of a powerhouse than she is with considerable more charm, too. I also loved reading about a descendant of Peter Reidinger. Peter Reidinger IV is Earth’s Prime and it’s nice to see the family line continue. Another interesting part of the story is how Deneb is handling the aftermath of the devastation. A new colony only three generations old and they just lost three-fifths of their population and both of their major cities. Deneb is a cash-strapped planet that needs to get it’s major export (minerals) up and running again in order to pay off the colonization debt. It makes me appreciate all of the things I have and how I can just make a run to the store if I need something. All-in-all a great story to get lost in.*Book source ~ My home library
    • 4/5
      I used to love this series when I was younger and it did stand up to re-reading for me.The Talents are spread out over the Nine Star League using their psionic abilitiies to help things along. Among these abilities there's a lot of variety and power, but there are very few high-powered telepaths, the ones who can help push cargo, and onto a small mining colony one is born. Orphaned at an early age and known as The Rowan she's trained by the Prime on her planet. The first part follows her youth. Her life changes when she comes into contact with another telepath, male and needing her help. She discovers more about herself and her abilities and has to face some of her fears.I liked it, there were some casually sexist moments in it but it was published in 1990, and the author is of an age where some of that was normal. Still the attitudes have improved from the first book, I do want to continue with this series and see where and how it continues to entertain (I hope)
    • 3/5
      This book is good as far as sci-fi novels go. I didn't like how the Rowan's lover just kinda popped up and all the sudden they were in love and everything was mushy and lovey-dovey. That kinda killed it for me, actually. She's also referred to as his wife, but there's never any ceremony. If it wasn't for that, I would have thoroughly enjoyed the book and would probably read all the rest of the books in the series. As it is now, I'm not sure if I want to keep reading the unreal romantic garbage. On the other hand, it isn't writted to be sexy, to the point where the characters will be having sex, and you're wondering if maybe they're just touching hands. Yeah.
    • 4/5
      "The Rowan" and its sequel, "Damia," are far superior to the further entries in the series. I believe this is due to spreading the narrative thin across too many protagonists as the Rowan's progeny multiply. However, I am getting ahead of myself. On its own merits, "The Rowan" is a highly inventive love story of possibly the loneliest woman in the galaxy and the one man who might be able to match her. Isolated due to her incredible telepathic powers above and beyond anything that anyone has ever seen, as well as her orphaned upbringing, the Rowan becomes the force behind the galaxy's transportation system, which is based on the teleportation talents of the Rowan and her ilk. One day she hears a call from a powerful unidentified telepath of a distant solar system, which is under attack from an unrelenting alien menace. Unless she can render aid, she might lose her chance for companionship with the one person with whom she's ever felt a deep connection, as equals. And she's never even met him! Gasp! Tell me that doesn't pique your interest. Rest assured, the entire book is not just a love story. It's a detailed fleshing out of a neat concept, wherein telepaths are not oracles or magic-wielders, but are seamlessly integrated into commerce as the engines of galactic transportation.This book is good pulpy fun and I return to it every couple of years. Try it, you might like it.
    • 3/5
      This is only partly a science fiction novel, it has feminist elements and sometimes appears to be a romance novel. The male characters are not well developed at all. The female characters dominate. This is a story of psychic ability. What I didn't like about it is that everyone seems to be classified by the amount of ability they have. It is the only thing that matters. People without "Talent" don't really appear in the novel. Because of that I find the story slightly disappointing.
    • 4/5
      The Rowan is a fun light SciFi read and I enjoyed it. Serious SciFi? Not really. This was mostly a novel about a woman who had an unfortunate beginning and eventually triumphed over all obstacles put in her path. Her biggest challenges were usually herself. Overall I would say this was more an adventure story or better yet a fairy tale, It starts with a little development of the main character and then throws problems her way to over come (generally fairly easily). Each one gets bigger than the last, and finally everyone lives happily ever after, once the dragon has been slain. I did enjoy this book, it was a fun light read and worth the little time it takes.
    • 4/5
      Thin story, with some good characters. Probably should have been a short story.
    • 5/5
      Anne McCaffrey may be best known for her Dragonriders of Pern, but the "Talent" series is my favorite. In the future, humanity has developed telekinetic, telepathic and other extra-sensory abilities. Rowan is the most powerful telepath yet, this is her story.
    • 1/5
      I also loved this book when I read it aged about 10 or 11. After re-reading it now i'm older, It's not as good as I remember. Why isn't it classified as children's fiction?
    • 2/5
      Really bad series. No redeeming value at all.