Classic SF: Powers that Be, Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Powers that Be
Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
ISBN: 078572852X
Read January 16, 2015
First book of the Petaybee trilogy (Power Lines and Power Play)

Really more Science Fantasy than SF, this is very much like Pern in that "psy" type abilities and planetary sentience are treated as having equal possibility with space travel and terraforming.

Most extra-Solar work these days is done by Intergal, a massive company that discovers, colonizes, and exploits the resources of planets across the galaxy.  Our hero is an ex-company soldier, who was injured during a "terrorist attack" on a remote colony world.

Now she's sent to Petaybee, a small rural, backwards ice-ball of a planet, to live out her last few years on the company's dime before her injury does her in.  Except, now that she's here, would she mind horribly integrating with the locals (a bizarro mix of Inuit and Irish cultures) and spying on them because they keep obstructing company efforts to locate and mine the planet's valuable resources?  If so, she'll find that her pension is increased, and she'll get access to the company base, rather than the useless empty company store meant for the locals.

Now, she's stuck between loyalty to her employer, and a growing sense of unease that the company is about to commit a terrible moral offense against a sentient mind.

I enjoyed it enough to pick up the next, but it was a bit weak in places.  It's fairly obvious that the weird Irish/Inuit blend was the reason for the story, and everything else was sketched in to support that odd premise.  The company goons are company goons, the locals are nearly all wonderful people, and the "powers" of the planet and the genetically-altered (good lord the dithering about with genetic manipulation and genetic alteration and adaptations was enough to drive one nuts) residents were even more thinly-related to actual science than the magic dragons of the Pern books.

Fun to read for the history lesson, and to see how far the genre has come; I'm reading Ancillary Justice at the same time, and the contrast is mind-blowing.