The Ship Who Won by Anne McCaffrey & Jody Lynn Nye. 330 pages.
Anne McCaffrey has long been one of my favourite authors, but I'm sorry to say, towards the end of her life her books decreased in quality rather a lot and this is one of the later ones.
Set in the same universe as the classic The Ship Who Sang, it tells of another "brainship" named Carialle and her "brawn" Keff, exploring uncharted systems looking for alien intelligence.
On a planet called Ozran, they think they've found some, but further investigation proves that the "aliens" are descendants of a human colony ship, using alien tech that they don't fully understand, and in danger of destroying the entire planet if someone doesn't stop them…
Alas, a rather cliche plot, not particularly well-executed and plot elements introduced and never properly resolved make this book rather disappointing and just a little bit dull.
