Review Detail

Anne McCaffrey is the bestselling author of many different books (notably a series on The Dragonriders of Pern) and has developed a legion of followers.

One of her latest series is a collaboration (with fellow authors Margaret Ball and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough) that follows the adventures of Acorna, the Unicorn Girl. While the title character sounds fanciful (a Unicorn girl?), the series is as much hard science fiction as Ms. McCaffrey's others.

Acorna: The Unicorn Girl begins the series. A trio of space miners happen upon an escape pod containing Acorna. Her people are the Linyaari, a race that seems to be a cross between humanity and equines (the artist who drew the cover pictures seems to have taken the humanity portion to heart, much to the dismay of sticklers to the story). The Linyaari are at war with the Khleevi (a nasty, war-like people who care for nothing more than killing and savaging planets).

The first book deals with the miner's quest to keep Acorna safe and her fight to free the slave children of Kezdet. The adventures come fast and furious and the reader meets characters they will grow to cherish over the series.

The subplot in the first book that provides the kick off point for the second novel, Acorna's Quest, is Acorna's search for her lost people. She sets off with one of her miner "uncles", Calum, in search of her home planet.

They immediately become tangled in the happenings of Haven, a wandering ship home to planetless people. I'm afraid I can't really go into the details of the book--there are so many things going on that it would take pages to describe (and ruin the plot for you). Suffice it to say that Acorna finds her people by the end of the book.

The third novel, Acorna's People, deals with her homecoming. She finds herself feeling left out and strange. Her formative years with humans shaped her into a person unlike the rest of the Linyaari. However, she rises to her accustomed level of success when she helps to save her people from a threat more insidious than the Khleevi. And, perhaps, she even finds true love...

In all, the series is an excellent one that will pull you in completely. I found that switching the collaborating author (from Margaret Ball to Elizabeth Ann Scarborough in the third book) was disruptive. There were some inconsistencies in the plot that bothered me (but haven't bothered anyone else I've talked to about the books) that were probably a result of that switch. However, even those problems were not enough to spoil my enjoyment of the series.

The books have everything: war, love, friendship...you name it, and some subplot or other covers it.