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Acorna's World

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Overview

Acorna the "unicorn girl" -- found as a baby years ago, abandoned and floating alone in an escape pod at the far end of the galaxy -- has made peace with her past, her Linyaari heritage, and with the powerful "differences" that set her apart from the loving humans who raised her. But only in the deep reaches of limitless space can she truly feel at home. Now, aboard the interplanetary salvage vessel Condor, Acorna is free once more, traveling through space in the company of her good friend, ship's commander Captain Jonas Becker, his gargantuan feline "first mate" Roadkill, and Aari, a proud Linyaari survivor of torture at the hands of the savage, bug-like Khleevi. But the journey is interrupted when a transmitted distress call -- faint but undeniable -- draws Acorna and her companions down to the surface of a nearby planet. What awaits them is a world of wonders, shrouded in an atmosphere of strange, intoxicating perfumes.

Editorial Reviews

Gentle Unicorn Girl Acorna makes her fourth appearance in this galaxy-spanning successor to Acorna's Quest. Her shy, empathetic race, the pacific Linyaari, are still menaced by the horrid insectoid Khleevi, whose cannibalistic Young feast on their own elders as well as on other races they torture and destroy. Acorna, aboard the Condor, a spacegoing salvage ship captained by her friend Jonas Becker and accompanied by the vile-tempered Makahomian Temple Cat Road Kill and her Linyaari friend, Aari, who was previously maimed by the Khleevi, answers a distress call that leads her to a planet of sticky-veined sentient vines holding the secret to sapping the Khleevi and saving the Linyaari from extermination. Along the way, Acorna and Aari fall in love, a giant new Moon of Opportunity marketing venture (MOO) opens up for Acorna's adopted neo-Bedouin Uncle Hafiz, and the former slave children Acorna rescued earlier enjoy suitable education, gainful employment and a future of endless Happy Meals. Predictably strong on sweetness and light, noble self-sacrifice and plenty of teeny-bopper growing-up pangs though correspondingly superficial in characterizations and future scientific wonders this latest chapter in Acorna's adventures also offers (especially toward its close) some wry social commentary on capitalistic machinations and elder-eating younger generations: harmless good spacefaring fun. The novel includes a glossary of terms and proper names and "Brief Notes on the Linyaari Language." (Aug.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Anne McCaffrey

Anne McCaffrey, the Hugo Award--winning author of the bestselling Dragonriders of Pern novels, is one of science fiction's most popular authors. She lives in a house of her own design, Dragonhold-Underhill, in County Wicklow, Ireland.

Bio of Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, and went into the Bethany Hospital School of Nursing after high school. Afterward she joined the Army Nurse Corps, and served in Vietnam. The novel that came out of that experience, The Healer's War, won the 1989 Nebula Award for best novel. Afterward she came back to the world and settled in Alaska, where she wrote the first of her more than thirty published novels while also working toward her History degree. Currently she lives, writes, and beads in the Pacific Northwest. Her novels include three of the Petaybee books, co-written with Anne McCaffrey, as well as the last several books in the bestselling Acorna series. Her solo novels include The Lady in the Loch, Channeling Cleopatra, and the sequel Cleopatra 7.2.

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Additional Info

Imprint

HarperCollins

Filesize

943.66 KB

Number of Pages

384

eBook ISBN

9780061160677

Excerpt from: Acorna's World by Anne McCaffrey

Roughly six weeks after she had joined the crew of the Condor, flagship of Becker Interplanetary Recycling and Salvage Enterprises, Ltd., Acorna sat on "salvage watch" at the helm of the ship, surrounded by the softly glowing console lights in the cockpit and the billions of stars beyond. She felt contented, almost as if she were once more home -- back in the first home she could really remember, the mining ship she had shared with her adopted uncles. Behind her for the moment were the intricacies of Linyaari society and culture. Before her instead were the intricacies of the universe as recorded in the notes, tapes, and files of Captain Jonas Becker and his illustrious parent, astrophysicist and salvage magnate Theophilus Becker.

To give herself something to do during the long watch, she was charting those notations methodically so that the planets, moons, wormholes, black holes, "pleated" space, "black water" space, and other locations visited by the Beckers could be easily relocated, and the sites where they had once been could be revisited if the need arose.

Becker had grumbled at first when she started this chore. Since the death of his adoptive father, Theophilus Becker, from whom he had inherited both the Condor and the salvage business, Jonas Becker had been lord and master of the Condor, with only Roadkill -- or RK for short -- the huge Makahomian Temple Cat he had rescued from a wreck, for company. Becker didn't like his belongings tampered with or moved. But Acorna had found plenty of evidence that RK periodically made nests out of the hard copies of the notes, often shredded them when he felt the urge, and, in a few sorry instances, had added his own personal -- and remarkably pungent contributions to them when he was displeased with the state of his shipboard toilet. Though she could easily eradicate the odor and the stains, nothing could make the shredded notes legible again. It was high time someone charted the notes before RK had his way with the lot of them. After a few "reasonable discussions," Jonas had stopped grumbling and let Acorna get on with her task.