The first chapter of this book, which describes the inevitable death of a father and his eight-year-old son at the hands of a hunter-killer robot, is as perfect as everything I have ever read in fiction.

I thoroughly enjoyed this YA hard-sf novel by the late Charles Sheffield, who was then chief scientist of the EarthSat corporation. He was a terrific writer, with the knack for combining realistic human motivation with fascinating science.

An eagerly anticipated "sharecropping" sequel to Van Vogt's classic NULL-A. John C. Wright is the perfect choice.

I started reading this once and stopped part way through because I thought the idea of a dragon living inside a star was too silly for belief. I came back to this book after reading the author's second book, SPIDER STAR, and made it all the way through this time. It was worth it. There was a satisfying science fictional explanation for everything.

The one weak spot that still remains is the premise that a corporation would send a hunting party to capture a "star dragon" and start casting nets and firing off photon torpedoes right away. It seems a lot more likely that super smart people in the 26th Century would start the same way we would start today, i.e. with a couple of years of careful, passive observation. After all, they flew 250 light years to find this thing, what's the hurry?

Brilliant premise, but title character & I failed to click. Wound up skimming last 2/3 of book and tossing aside.