Three old space prospectors rear a small, alien unicorn child.
Anne McAffrey is one of the world's leading science-fiction writers, and has won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. Born and raised in the US, although of Irish extraction, she now lives permanently in Ireland, in the heart of the Wicklow Mountains, where, as well as writing, she breeds horses. She has recently been awarded the Margaret A. Edwards' Lifetime Achievement Literary Award. She is the creator of the Dragons of Pern series. Margaret Ball lives in Austin, Texas with her husband, children and pets.She has a BA in mathematics and a PhD in linguistics from the University of Texas.After graduation, she taught at UCLA, then spent several years honing her science fiction and fantasy skills by designing computer software and making inflated promises about its capabilities.Her books include Lost in Translation and Mathemagics. When not writing, she plays the flute, makes quilts, and feeds the pets.
Found in a survival pod in space by prospectors, the infant Acorna soon exhibits the ability to analyze deficiencies in plants by taste, purify water and air, and heal. Taken to the planet Kezdet to avoid scientists who want to study her, Acorna discovers barbaric child-labor practices and vows to rescue the children. McCaffrey and Ball have created a magical alien in this fantasy/science fiction story. Recommended for sf collections.
The vein of invention McCaffrey worked so effectively in her Pern series seems to have been exhausted. 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. 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. 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. 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. Cut the "a"s from the title and what's left sums up this novel perfectly. (July)
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