More half-baked romance with science-fiction trappings: sequel to the flimsy The Rowan (1990), a far future where a handful of powerful psychic Talents teleport cargo and people about the galaxy while chatting telepathically among themselves. The first half of this mushy yarn reprises The Rowan, but told from another point of view, that of Afra, a confusingly named young man whose unrequited yet unpossessive love of The Rowan eventually enables him to become her indispensable assistant. Later, The Rowan's precocious daughter Damia, a Talent in her own right, fails to perceive her need for a partner--will Afra, who has helped raise her and of course loves her, be disappointed again?--until an invasion attempt by a superpowerful alien psychic vampire, Sodan, that the Talents barely survive. At last, mentally scarred from the encounter, Damia and Afra find mutual love and soon are presiding over another alien contact, this time friendly. Nothing but weightless balderdash, not so much for the drippy romancing as the dismally cursory aliens and McCaffrey's lackadaisical efforts to work them up into some sort--any sort--of plot.
