Search - Ascending

Gardner was a new author for me, with this book. To me, this novel suffered a lot due to the fact that it seemed like the author couldn't decided whether he wanted to write a tongue-in-cheek, funny farce or a serious sf adventure. The result was something that can't really be taken seriously, but isn't really funny, either.
The narrator is Oar, the last (conscious) woman of her kind - a woman made of transparent glass, who looks, we are told "llike a digital effect." She is also incredibly self-absorbed, naive, and childlike. It turns out that there is a plot-related reason for her character flaws, but reading a story narrated by this incredibly tiresome character gets, well, tiresome.
Oar is worried bout succumbing to the problem all her people have succumbed to 'Tired Brain Syndrome'. Around the age of 50, they get tired, confused, and just go to sleep. People though Oar was dead, but she is not, and now an interplanetary team including her friend Festina Ramos has showed up - but another group wants to kidnap her as well - and a mysterious alien who is always associated with terrible disasters has appeared to her as well, offering her a cure in return for her cooperation with an unspecified plan.... the story is rather unmemorable.

I love this series, and am glad I discovered this author.

Not your typical sci-fi, that's for sure. The characters and worlds are imaginative, the dialog is always great, and the character of Oar made me laugh out loud many, many times. She's the type of fictional character you'd love to hang out with in real life.

Read "Expendable" (first) and the other books in the series as well. You won't be disappointed, unless you have no sense of humor.

The continuing story of Oar, who has an indestructible transparent body and her adventures with Festina of the Explorer Corps

Very good read, continues with Festina Ramos and Oar, the transparent Melaquin.

Oar's transparent body is indestructible. Yet the mind it houses grows weary and will soon surrender to the catatonic torpor that has claimed the others of her genetically altered human race. But Oar cannot sleep, not yet. There are powerful forces seeking her destruction for reasons unknown.