mayhap

Survivor lies tangential to the rest of the Patternist books, which I recently read in internal chronological order. When you tease them back into published order, with Patternmaster being published first, all the subsequently-published Patternists books exist to explain it.

Survivor isn't as weird as Patternmaster, as promising as Mind of My Mind, as twisted as Clay's Ark or as brilliant as Wild Seed, so I suppose that in that way it is also the odd book out of the Patternist cycle, although I think condemning it to languish out of print was a little harsh. It could be read as a rough draft of the thematic material of the Xenogenesis trilogy, and certainly in comparison with the Oankali, the Kohn are rather "Star Trek-y", being 'merely' humanoids with technicolor expressive fur.

Worth reading, in my opinion.