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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780345462190
ISBN number: 034546219X
Label: Del Rey
Manufacturer: Del Rey
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 336
Printing Date: September 30, 2003
Publishing house: Del Rey
Release Date: September 30, 2003
Sale Popularity Level: 456775
Studio: Del Rey
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In a far-flung capitalistic empire among the stars, generations of colonization without a single contact with an intelligent, non-human species have reduced the colonial process to a franchise system. Amid the abuses of the system which inevitably follow, an old woman decides not to leave when her failed colony is evacuated, thinking the freedom to live alone and die in peace is worth any risk. In this entertaining but suspenseful first-contact novel, Elizabeth Moon's apt depiction of the interaction between old and young plays counterpoint to the interaction between human and alien.
Product Description:
For forty years, Colony 3245.12 has been Ofelia’s home. On this planet far away in space and time from the world of her youth, she has lived and loved, weathered the death of her husband, raised her one surviving child, lovingly tended her garden, and grown placidly old. And it is here that she fully expects to finish out her days–until the shifting corporate fortunes of the Sims Bancorp Company dictates that Colony 3245.12 is to be disbanded, its residents shipped off, deep in cryo-sleep, to somewhere new and strange and not of their choosing. But while her fellow colonists grudgingly anticipate a difficult readjustment on some distant world, Ofelia savors the promise of a golden opportunity. Not starting over in the hurly-burly of a new community . . . but closing out her life in blissful solitude, in the place she has no intention of leaving. A population of one.
With everything she needs to sustain her, and her independent spirit to buoy her, Ofelia actually does start life over–for the very first time on her own terms: free of the demands, the judgments, and the petty tyrannies of others. But when a reconnaissance ship returns to her idyllic domain, and its crew is mysteriously slaughtered, Ofelia realizes she is not the sole inhabitant of her paradise after all. And, when the inevitable time of very first contact finally arrives, she will find her life changed yet again–in ways she could never have imagined. . . .
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For forty years, Colony 3245.12 has been Ofelia's home. On this planet far away in space and time from the world of her youth, she has lived and loved, weathered the death of her husband, raised her one surviving child, lovingly tended her garden, and grown placidly old.
And it is here that she fully expects to finish out her days -- until the shifting corporate fortunes of the Sims Bancorp Company dictates that Colony 3245.12 is to be disbanded, its residents shipped off, deep in cryo-sleep, to somewhere new and strange and not of their choosing.
But while her fellow colonists grudgingly anticipate a difficult readjustment on some distant world, Ofelia savors the promise of a golden opportunity. Not starting over in the hurly-burly of a new community... but closing out her life in blissful solitude, in the place she has no intention of leaving. A population of one.
With everything she needs to sustain her, and her independent spirit to buoy her, Ofelia actually does start life over -- for the very first time on her own terms: free of the demands, the judgments, and the petty tyrannies of others.
But when a reconnaissance ship returns to her idyllic domain, and its crew is mysteriously slaughtered, Ofelia realizes she is not the sole inhabitant of her paradise after all. And, when the inevitable time of very first contact finally arrives, she will find her life changed yet again -- in ways she could never have imagined...
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Rated by buyers 
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A book in three parts. A colony on a planet pulls out, as their sponsor has sold it to someone else. One elderly woman decides to stay behind.
She enjoys her freedom, to start with, and starts investigating things she couldn't do before.
Eventually, she starts a relationship with the natives of the planet, which becomes important when yet another corporate survey team turns up wanting to use the planet.
Rated by buyers 
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I picked this book up to relax for a bit,during a very busy weekend, but I couldn't put it down! I knew the things to do would still be there on sunday, so I kept reading ! It is a very good story,I recommend this book!! It has a strong character,it is suspenseful.
It is a good,but different Sci-fi story. I read this from a library,byt plan to purchase a copy, to re-read often!
Elizabth Moon at her best!
Rated by buyers -
I put off buying this book because it sounded dull, however once I bought it and got around to reading it, I was pleasantly surprised. True there are some dull spots but on the whole it was quite good.
I have all of the books written by Ms. Moon that I have heard of and really like everything of hers I have read. I am waiting anxiously for her subsequent one "Engaging the Enemy".
Rated by buyers -
When her husband Humberto died, Ofelia became her son's dependent in the eyes of Sims Bancorp. Forty years after she helped to found Colony 3245.12, all of her children but Barto are dead along with their father; and Ofelia tolerates her domineering daughter-in-law Rosara as best she can. When Sims Bancorp sends a ship to withdraw the colonists, after deciding to abandon its unprofitable colony and cede its license to the world that Ofelia now considers her home, the company demands extra payment for relocating the useless old woman who will probably die in cryosleep, anyway. Luckily for Ofelia, though, she's scheduled for a later shuttle than Barto and Rosara. When she slips away from the village to hide in the nearby, still untouched alien forest, the only two people who would protest her absence are already in the cryotanks. Soon the ship is gone, leaving Ofelia alone. And that's just fine with her.
The old woman revels in her solitude, because this is the very first time in her long life that she's been free from the demands and restrictions placed on her by others. She tends her garden, competently maintains the village's power plant, and laughs when she throws her last pair of detested shoes into the recycler. Then another company's ship enters orbit, and starts to insert a colony at a location thousands of miles from Ofelia's village. At which time she, and the newly arrived colonists, find out that this world has indigenous intelligent life after all.
The friend who recommended this book to me was right. Ofelia, a person who had little worth to start with in her society's eyes - a housewife and mother, educated no more than necessary to perform her expected tasks - has no value at all now, in age and physical infirmity. But what she does have, a naturally intelligent old woman's experience and wisdom and insight, turn out to be exactly what the unexpected and dangerous very first contact situation on her adopted world requires. Grumpy and no longer willing to suffer fools gladly - still savoring life, but no longer reluctant to risk leaving it behind if that's the price of being free at last to make her own choices - Ofelia is at once a fully realized individual, and a worthy representative of all the other wise and salty old women whose value too few Human societies appreciate. Or even comprehend.
A thought-provoking delight!
Rated by buyers -
I could not disagree more with the last two reviewers.
First, it may spend some time with Ophelia and her solitary existence, and I actually put the book down for a while because of that, but I loved the book in the end.
OK, it may poke experts in the eye, but being and "expert" myself I can only say it is really overrated and in general we overrate ourselves. There are idiots and twits in every profession, mine included.
But, it tells a very interesting and captivating story about a little old lady in very improbable circumstances who, in the end, finds herself and a new meaning in her life.
Read it... I think you will enjoy ie.
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