First in a trilogy, this tells the story of the culture clash between Olwen, survivor of the family sent to the planet Isis to tend the beacon there and survey the planet for human colonisation, and the newly arrived colonists. Olwen's Guardian robot, her friend and servant, has adapted his charge to survive on Isis and this brings her into a serious clash with the colonists, with resultant heartbreak for Olwen, and sets up the situation for the next volume in the series.

There are some fine evocations of the alien planet with its different lifeforms and the wildness of the mountains, and Olwen is described vividly also.

Quite an interesting YA tale which deals with issues such as prejudice, attitudes to people who are different in some way, and how sentient a robot could become. There's also the background information of how humans have totally wrecked Earth and are now spreading out into the galaxy, seemingly without having learned any lessons from what they have done to the home planet. This gives the book an underlying thread of pessimism, not that common in a YA novel, at least of the period when it was written. ( )

Another young adult science fiction book that was easy to read within a couple of hours. I liked the story idea, but the execution was too sanitized, even for a young teen. (September 15, 2005) - also it looks like I read it back in 1982 and forgot it... ( )

After her parents died in a freak storm, Olwen has grown up alone on the alien world of Isis. She spends her days roaming the planet she considers her own. The only person she speaks to is the Guardian of Isis. But at last, colonists are coming to Isis.

This book feels very dated. The style of writing, the gender norms, the tech, all felt very golden-age scifi. Additionally, the OMG PLOT TWISTs are excrutiatingly obvious. Once they're out of the way, the story improves. Overall, I did quite like this story. Although Olwen is almost excessively feminine in some ways, she is also incredibly physically courageous (fans of Cashore's [b:Graceling|3236307|Graceling (The Seven Kingdoms, #1)|Kristin Cashore|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1281303183s/3236307.jpg|3270810] will appreciate her) and self-sufficient. And most of all, I love the basic message of this book: that being yourself and free is worth more than romance or even companionship. ( )

This was my favorite book as a kid. It held up well: the perfectly timed build-up of the plot, the vivid and beautiful descriptions of a high desert world, and the believability of the main character were all as riveting as they seemed when I was ten. Though the book deals with Serious Issues, as young adult books do, it doesn't offer any simple solutions, and the resolution, though quietly satisfying, isn't quite the happy ending you'd expect. It offers a moral lesson I enjoyed as much this time as the first: sometimes people suck, and it's best to just go live in a cave.

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Effortless read. Despite the fact that all major plot points are predictable from the first ten pages, there's an archetypical resonance to the plight of the heroine that's hard to resist. The novel ends on a surprisingly misanthropic note for YA material, which I found very refreshing. ( )