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Only Human

Style: Average

Attitude: Take Care

Cover of Only Human

Author: Kate Thompson

Series: Fourth World

Publisher: The Bodley Head

Age Range: Young Teens+

Period: Near Future

Setting: Scotland / Tibet / The Sea

Genres:  SciFiThought-provoking


Characters:

  • See The "Fourth World" Series
  • [Loki] is a talking dog, very attached to Christie, and he to her. Before the start of the book she had an accident in which she suffered some brain damage, so she can be quite troublesome.
  • Tenpa is a Tibetan monk who has a kind of sixth sense with which he sees things without his eyes. He has befriended the last of the Yeti.

Synopsis:

Bernard and Colin return from Africa with signs that the legendary Yeti of the Tibetan Himalayas may be the answer to how mankind acquired the Missing Link gene. They return, accompanied by Christie, Sandy, Roxy the fox and Darling the starling. On the way, Danny is captured by merpeople who believe him to be one of them. Meanwhile Fourth World comes under attack by paramilitary scavengers and Maggie and Tina are forced to hide in the underground lab.

Notes:

See The “Fourth World” series

Ethics: More than elsewhere, Bernard shows his attitude that the end justifies the means: when they do meet the only remaining Yeti, she explicitly rejects Bernard's proposal that they bind her DNA with a human child to allow her DNA to continue after he death. She rejects this idea not least because she can see the harm it has done Sandy. Bernard, however, does manage to steal some of her hair with a view to doing exactly that and it isn't until Sandy confronts him that he relents, and even then only after a battle of words.

Wednesday 18th February 2004