This is the second adventure featuring Stephanie Harrington and the treecat she calls Lionheart but who calls himself Climbs Quickly. This time a study team has come to the planet Sphinx to study the treecats to determine their intelligence. Along with the team comes the son of the team leader - Anders Whittaker. Stephanie develops her first crush on him which the team leader wants to encourage in the hopes that she will share more with the team than she has shared in the past.

Stephanie is also concerned about getting her provisional air-car license and her role as a junior ranger in the Sphinx Forest Service. Her parents are concerned about her lack of friends her own age but Stephanie is slowly learning that all the kids her age are not "blackholes." She has always been friends with fellow junior SFS ranger Karl Zivonik but now she is getting to know some other kids - Toby, Jessica, Christine and Chet.

When the expedition including Anders goes missing (because of the arrogance of his father Dr. Whittaker), Stephanie is very concerned about locating them. The concern gets even higher when lightning-strike fires occur. Stephanie and Karl and their friends have to rescue a clan of treecats that are in the way of the fires and stumble on and rescue the scientists at the same time.

The story was entertainingly told both from Stephanie's and Climbs Quickly's points of view. We could see Climbs Quickly's frustration that the two-legs just didn't understand what the treecats were trying to tell them. He also had to try to understand the volatile emotions of Stephanie as she grows from child to woman.

I recommend this book and the first book in the series - A Beautiful Friendship - to all young science fiction fans. ( )

"Action-oriented young adult SF story that falls a little short"

"Fire Season" continues the tale of Stephanie and "her" treecat. It's a fun read, with a "talented loner teen discovers how to make friends" motif, nested in an action-oriented plot about fire and friendship and what it really means to be a person.

I suspect that, if I had been reading the printed page, I might have skimmed through pieces of the prose but Khristine Hyam's performance kept my full attention. She brought the book to life for me.

If this was the second episode in a syfi channel tv series, I'd be looking forward to the rest of the season.

As a novel, it falls a little short, ending rather than finishing. The action scenes are very well done but some of the adult characters seem to have wandered in from Central Casting.

A fun listen but a little light. ( )

Stephanie and Lionheart's adventures continue. A dry season brings the danger of fire. Newcomers to study the treecats bring young romance and more problems by unethical researchers. ( )

The second in the YA spin off series covering the discovery of the treecats. This time a real honest to goodness official science group comes to study the cats. The leader of the group brings his son with him hoping to use him to get closer to Stephanie. He is the usual I know best science guy and most everyone else follows along with him. Poor decisions put the group in danger during forest fire season and Stephanie and her friends help rescue them. The voice in this one was a bit flatter and I don't know if that had something to do with it having two writers or honestly one story arc instead of two that the previous book had. ( )

(Completion date approx) Continues the sort-of prequel series, with the ancestor of Capt/Adm Honor Harrington and the first treecat to bond with a human. The ancestor is a female teen, so the book works as a JA novel. ( )