she wrote a good Quora piece (about archetype vs cliche...) and to make a special effort to appreciate her writing (of star trek novels & others)

I have the Playboy Paperbacks edition which has a scantily dressed woman with plenty of bosom showing through her ripped dress, which leaves expectations of a cheap romance novel.
Instead I found it reminded me a bit of Dune.
By which I mean that for a fair while everything was above my head - so much detail going into things I didn't understand. Felt like I had jumped in midway through a series or even midway through a book.

Took a while to get into it and then found I liked it enough to read some more of the series. ( )

Re-reading the series in anticipation of picking up the new books I didn't know existed.

Story successfully sets up the world and its other-ness, on both sides of the post-mutation genetic split in humanity. In spots, there's what I think are mistakes in Hugh's character, where he seems too unsurprised by terms it wasn't clear he should have known. But other than that, and a couple of small editing errors, I find this a book that holds up well to my memories of it, and I'm so glad I didn't purge it with so many other books years ago. 3.5 stars.
( )

In the far future a mutation develops and humankind is split into Simes and Gens. Simes "change over" at adolescence into vampire-like creatures that must suction off energy from Gens every month. Ordinarily, this causes the death of the Gen. But then "Channels" are discovered who could safely take energy from Gens and give that energy to Simes. But there are still "Sime" territories where Gens are kept like cattle, and "Gen" territories where a developing Sime would be shot on sight. Enter Hugh, a Gen that must pose as a "companion" to a Channel in order to find his kidnapped love, Aisha. Not my favorite of the Sime/Gen books--that would probably be Ambrov Keon--but definitely a good read in a series that's a favorite of mine. Both Lichtenberg and Lorrah who write books in this series are good storytellers and create characters to care about. And since this was the first book in the series to be published (even if not the first chronologically) it makes a good entry into the series. ( )

This is the book that introduced an entire new species - a divided humanity that must find a way to reunite or perish.
Sime-phobic Hugh must enter Sime territory to find his talented artist girlfriend before she can be forced to counterfeit currency plates.
In order to move freely about, he must pretend to be a Companion a personal donor to the Head of House Zeor himself.

But when they are trapped in the wilderness by outlaws - can Hugh bring himself to feed Klyd, at risk of his own life and that of his woman as well?? ( )