More fantasy than science fiction with a bustling yet flimsy plot, lots of scene-shifting, stereotyped characters, and the McCaffrey hallmark to pull in the crowds.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. Vengeful Security Guardians hope to nab the miners for previous indiscretions Hafiz's agents are hot on the trail and Chinese mystic and enlightened businessman Delszaki Li wants to catch Acorna, since he's convinced that she's the key to overthrowing Kezdet's vicious and thoroughly entrenched system of child slavery. But Hafiz also covets Acorna, so they flee again one thing leads to another, and eventually they end up on planet Kezdet, the last place they wanted to go. Bargaining with Rafik's uncle Hafiz, they arrange to switch their ship's registration and start new careers as space traders. When the miners return to base, though, some scientists try to snatch Acorna for study, so she and the miners retreat hastily into space. Young Acorna, who grows-and learns-swiftly, soon manifests the ability to purify air and water, and heal injuries with her horn. Three space miners, Gill, Calum, and Rafik, find a survival pod drifting in space inside sleeps Acorna, a furry, unicorn-like humanoid infant. Cut the ''a''s from the title and what's left sums up this novel perfectly.First of a projected series from the authors of a previous collaboration, PartnerShip (a 1992 mass market).

The authors stall in getting their major theme of exploited children under way, and they unconvincingly muddle it with precious goings-on among Acorna's three adopted miner dads, sentimentalized little victims, shady planetside entrepreneurs and a stock villain.

Acorna's horn can detect poisons and nuzzle sick and wounded humans back to health, so she becomes the savior of Kezdet, a Dickensian planet full of abused children slaving in mines, match factories and brothels. After three grungy Terran bachelor asteroid miners find the silver-curled, long-faced baby and name her ''Acorna'' for the strange protuberance growing from her forehead, the story gallops into a gulch of sentimentality. Collaborating again with Ball (after Partnership), McCaffrey opens promisingly in the far future with charming doomed unicorn beings who seal their infant into a survival pod, hoping someone will save her after they choose to die in space rather than in a grisly Khlevii torture cell.

The vein of invention McCaffrey worked so effectively in her Pern series seems to have been exhausted.

Acorna books