MAN-KZIN WARS IV, created by LARRY NIVEN

Going back to the classics: LARRY NIVEN, a notable SF writer has created the KZINTI, berserker “felinoids” of upright eight-feet-tall tigers.

SURVIVOR is a reverse My Fair Lady story. A rejected Kzin, unable to compete with other males, finally succeeds in neurochemically modifying a human slave into a semblance of a female kzin, a kzinrett. Very sweet, unless you know that that the kzinretti are subsapient and can speak only a few hundred words.

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KZIN, much lighter, is the story of Lawrence Halloran, a telepath who infiltrates a kzin ship by impersonating a dead kzin, Fixer-of-Weapons. Halloran can convince anyone they're seeing anything, as when he portrayed his headmaster parading around nude. He muses, “(Kzinti) could be dominant, vicious, and competitive. THEY were allowed to have fun.” If only the ship's own Telepath doesn't find him.

He defeats a challenger by projecting damaging blows through the strong claws he doesn't have. Yow! As the Halloran/Fixer personalities intertwine, Fixer jerks his hand back from data with a Shame/Disgrace sigil, or Top Secret. Halloran forces it forward. Likewise, a puzzled Fixer tells Halloran that screaming fights are normal greetings.

When Halloran finally drives the crew insane, the Halloran/Fixer entity battle Telepath for control of his body and mind. And Telepath has always been weak. It's a wonderful story about masquerade and reality.

QUICK TAKE: BLUE MOON RISING, BY SIMON GREEN

ANOTHER series by Simon Green is this typical fantasy world where a prince must slay a dragon and rescue a princess, with a twist. The prince, a second son, is sent off on his quest in the hope that it will kill him and remove him as a rival to his brother. And the gentle dragon wants nothing so much as getting the the princess, who's a terror and dangerous with a sword, taken off his hands. But there are other monsters to compensate, primarily the demons of the DARKWOOD, who seek to control the prince's Forest Land.

THE LIGHTNING THIEF, by RICK RIORDAN

Percy Jackson has always been able to think better around water, and be calmer near it. That's a very good thing, because his high school academic record has been dismal, mainly due to his ADHD and dyslexia. He doesn't know yet that he's a demi-god, the son of Poseidon. As he soon learns, the whole Greek mythological world exists today and always has, and the gods brawl and love as they always did.

When Percy discovers his heritage, he has to flee to Camp-Half Blood, a training camp for demi-gods, children with a Greek god for one parent. Here he's protected from the monsters who hunt demi-god, but must learn to fight them. He learns that his ADHD is the sign of his “battle skills” coming out, which help him pay attention to everything at once, and that his dyslexia is due to his brain being hard-wired to read ancient Greek. He must quickly develop all the fighting skills he can, because he's accused of stealing Zeus' thunderbolt, the mightiest weapon ever forged, and has ten days to return it before there's a war between the Big Three gods, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. In a quest which spans the continent, Percy goes after the lightning bolt with his new friends Grover, a satyr, and Annabeth, the daughter of Athena.

I loved this brilliant young adult novel, the first in a series. It's even sweeter to know that Riordan conceived this world out of bedtime stories demanded by his son, who struggled with ADHD and dyslexia.

The movie is not quite as good, but it has Chiron, Percy's centaur tutor, played by Pierce Brosnan in an award-winning role for best chest.