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I enjoyed the new Sara book. Well done Dale! (Spoilers follow)

Very happy
That Sara was made an ancient. (And now appears to be more sure of herself ..Thanks Tim)
That Sara is now with Tor in what appears to be a more stable relationship that makes her happy. (Afrak style multiple spouses situation down the road?)
That Tor appears to be coming around and getting a handle on being a whole person.

Puzzled
When Sara walks into the room at the ancients meeting she feels that Ali is worried and feeling a lot of tension. Was this due to Sara and Tor's relationship or outside factors? Ali herself has said that she is only fond of Tor and sees Trice and Alphonse as the true loves of his life.

Disappointed
That Sara did not get to have her meeting with Trice during the story. (Trice gave her a look they used to share when they needed to meet) I think the interaction between the two from Sarah's perspective would have been informative.

Request
I would very much like to read a Trice book before the new arc starts.

Let me preface this by saying I am very happy with the happy type ending of the book. She seems to get pretty much everything she wanted, plus respect. It made me warm and fuzzy inside since I've liked Sara's character pretty much all series. It was about time she was more than a sex toy and got good attention from Tor.

It makes me wonder though, since that is so unlike Dale...

Did Tim give her some command power? Is that why Tor and Ali jumped on her offer? Am I being overly paranoid?

But, did Tim make her a deluxe model so she could get anything she wanted? Because she is the only person he truly loves in any significant way?

Or maybe even to get Tor out of his hair and off the moon? He's smart enough to kill two birds with one stone after all.

Yeah... paranoia, reading to much into it. I'm sure it was just Dale giving us a happy ending for once. Not that he hasn't before, but usually it's only a foreshadow of a happy ending, more open ended. Or maybe he was just setting the stage for the second arc, to get people in position so to speak, so he jumped ahead six months for the happy ending.

Anyway, I'll stop now, it took about a week for these thoughts to start settling in my mind. Who really knows, I suck at guessing Dale's underlying story line.

SciShow Space on youtube covered "Terraforming: Can We Turn Mars Into Earth 2.0?" rather well in under 5 minutes. That could solve a lot of your martian issues. Except the magnetosphere thingy, you're gonna have to magic that one and press the I Believe button. So Mars doesn't do an Alderaan impression.

The EM field is just a field. They should be able to make one... Of course, they better have someone around to renew it every forty years or so.

Every time I try to think of a method of liquifying the martian core, magic or otherwise, the Death Star and the exploding planet pops into my head. Sara's job might be longer than she's expecting.

David I agree with your comments and concerns with Dale's "Happy Ending" Like you for now I'm just happy things turned out well.

I have no doubt that Sara was given some special abilities some of which were already listed in the story... She can go back to earth and is stronger faster etc. But Tor was already showing a great deal more interest in her before the change. The more I think about it (including my question regarding Ali above) I think they were all just very concerned about her mental state as they were reading her. This theory does take a little of the shine off the happy ending but still equals friends doing the right thing for each other. Even if she was given that type of ability I wouldn't be too broken up about it. She's been kicked around a bunch and I doubt she would abuse it intentionally. Now if Tim were to put some coding in there to bring her over to him (Since she's the one he really wants) that would be creepy.

As far as Tim killing two birds with one stone and getting Tor out of his hair as well..I wouldn't think that Tor is too much of an issue for Tim at the moment. Tor seems content to do his bakery stuff while rebuilding his own sense of self.

All in all tho your correct David. When Dale starts handing out any significant amount of happy time it's a pretty good indicator the hammer is about to fall.

Finished reading Sara's book, really enjoyed the experience. Though it went by too fast. (You'll have to do something about that, Dale, maybe hard-wire yourself to a computer or something.) I've never invested myself too much in Sara, Trice has always been my girl. So, of course I thought she needed more time in this book. I, too, thought she should have had a conversation with Sara. But hey, it WAS Sara's book, so I guess... Anyway, this story covers a little over a year, I think. I find it odd that no-one mentioned the incoming space fleet or the four-tens anywhere. With the additional Ancients now, I think Dale will have to have a meeting of the Ancients soon, in one of the next books, to bring everyone up to speed.( I'm still wrapped up in that plot point.

The ending of this book is somewhat similar to the snow scene in, um, ah,(senior moment) a previous book, so the hammer may not fall that hard. The Sara/Tor/Ali/Timon/Trice/Bob/Carol/Ted/&Alice thing may not play out as heart-rending as all that, I mean, they're all NorAm noble trained...

The only thing I fear is that the character base is starting to get unwieldy, I know I'm having trouble sometimes recalling who some of the minor character are in relationship to past episodes. And now, I find myself thinking too hard about who is who in other series, it gets distracting.(thanks Dale.) All that, is my own fault, however.

I'm really glad I got to know Sara better. She's a lot more introspective than I thought. But I guess she would have to be to get the job she had. At eleven!

There's truth to the unwieldy nature of the stories. Part of that is the long range plan of the works and the fact that this is book fifteen in a series. You either add things, and people or you have a very narrow storyline after a while.

I'll work on that one however.

By using memory cues when I can, not getting rid of anyone. The Maria book has fewer people that way and more reminders, since it's also meant to be fun for people that haven't read the Young Ancients before.

And the Maria book could bring in a whole new demographic as well.

I wasn't really worried about new people, new people are good.

Sometimes I have to scramble to remember the older people from earlier books that weren't that prominent, but new people don't have that issue at all... My advice is don't. Think I mean.

Plus, you know, with all the dead old ancients he needed new characters. I miss red and white... Green, gray, brown, and black not so much. If I missed any, that means I miss them even less. Like Blue... forgot blue. Poor blue...

Okay, its time for my medicine, so laters.