Collaboration Disaster (Acorna - Anne McCaffrey)

Name: campb3ll

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Product:	Acorna - Anne McCaffrey
Date:	26/09/01 (47 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Unique story

Disadvantages: Veers between twee and terrible

Acorna is an orphaned alien girl who has fur and a horn like a mythical unicorn albeit a humanoid one. She's rescued by 3 space prospector foster fathers and grows up to save the exploited victims of the child labour trade on the planet Kedzet. It's all rather unlikely but that's the nature of science fiction and fantasy.

The Plot
========

Gill, Calum and Rafik float about in space and mine likely asteroids for valuable minerals. They detect a distress signal and discover an enchanting alien infant in an escape pod, whom they name Acorna. They have to return to their HQ to unload their minerals. Unfortunately, the company they were contracted to switched hands and the new owners are only interested psychology and all mining operations are being phased out. A nasty side effect is that the psychologists are rather interested in Acorna. Losing their jobs is bad enough without losing their foster daughter so they immediately beat a hasty retreat with the help of Judit, a former child labour victim.

The next problem comes in the form of Rafik's uncle Hafiz, who is willing to help them become anonymous in exchange for Acorna joining his collection of "rarities". By this time, Acorna seems to have grown considerably - more like a 7 or 8 year now rather than a toddler. Anyway, of course Rafik and the boys have to trick Hafiz and escape with Acorna.

Believing themselves to be safe, the 3 prospectors find the time to do a bit of shopping on a handy planet. I hardly need to mention this was a bad decision. The shopping trip turns into a one-way trip to the planet Kedzet, where Li - a businessman as rich and powerful as Hafiz - is waiting to "persuade" them to part with Acorna. So they escape ... Actually, they don't because that would turn the novel into a boring set of capture/escape sequences. This point in the novel, instead, heralds a change of style. Acorna and foster fathers are re-united w
ith Judit (a sort of plot link) and agree to embark on a huge search and rescue mission as virtually all of Kedzet's trade is founded on illegal child labour. Fortunately, Acorna has now reached maturity - in a rather speedy 2 or 3 years - and can become a mother figure for the abused children.

The main change in style involves switching constantly between Acorna and the children, to weave 2 concurrent story threads together. The big plot change though is the sudden and complete acceptance of the rescue mission by Acorna and the 3 men. Not only must they find and remove all the child labour victims but they must build and maintain a moon base to house and protect them. No small undertaking is this but the little family seem to have no problems suddenly turning their lives upside down for it.

Well, needless to say, there is a happy ending - with a small hook thrown in to ensure readers will buy the sequel. If you're interested, the second novel in the series is Acorna's Quest and the third one is Acorna's People.

The Problems
============

It grieves me indeed to report that a novel is anything less than delightful but I can't recommend Acorna unless you happen to be McCaffrey or Ball fans and need this novel to prop up your collection. The first part of the novel, detailing Acorna's charming childhood, is an enchanting albeit saccharine encrusted piece of prose. The infant Acorna seems so real that you want to make goo-goo baby noises at her. It's not really an auspicious start for a novel and the plot, having no initial direction, bounces along in a sort of Brownian Motion. Every time the plot bounces off a new character, it pinwheels off into a new direction. The second part of the novel involves the rather distressingly realistic tales of the child labourers interspersed with the slow construction of the moon base and the urgent pairing off of the characters in preparation for the inevitable hap
py ending. It is impossible not to feel sympathetic towards the children but it is impossible to believe the plot as the other characters free-wheel through it.

The plot is not the only problem and I can't be so blind towards literature to say that a vacant novel is a good read. After the plot, the next problem I must highlight is the language. Despite the fact that my copy of this novel was both printed and published in Britain, it is entirely in American English. A minor irritation, to be sure, but too vexing to ignore when followed by all the other faults. Next to the language comes the "science" elements of the science fiction. As we can only assume the novel was deliberately set in American English, we can only assume that "Basic Interlingua" - the universal human language - is based solely on American English. On top of this, other elements have been crudely inserted to make the novel's version of the future seem realistic. Rafik and Hafiz seem to be following a religion that can only be a spin-off of Islam designed to amuse the reader - references to "the bad old ways" of the Koran and hijab are unmistakable. Even more insultingly, Li (a Chinese character) talks in broken Basic (English) e.g. "Also need someone with sense" and "Is offer of [Hafiz] acceptable to you".

Perhaps all these defects could be overlooked by fans but there is one final flaw to marvel at - the jarring historical elements. To further endorse the McCaffrey-Ball vision of the future, historical anecdotes and references are sprinkled throughout the story. Among others, there's the infamous tale of King Edward VIII of England who abdicated to marry American divorcee Mrs Wallis Simpson, the Celtic horse goddess Epona and Judit (a Chinese character) quietly thinking of herself as a Victorian governess. Not one of these elements sits comfortably in the story and, although it is impossible to say which author inserte
d them, they can only be seen to mesh as poorly as McCaffrey and Ball.

Conclusion
==========

Acorna is something of a disappointment. Some authors work well together, e.g. Pratchett and Gaiman's Good Omens, but McCaffrey and Ball just don't mesh. Superficially, they have enough in common: McCaffrey is US born and Ball is a US resident; McCaffrey is a part-time lecturer and Ball has a PhD in Linguistics; both authors specialise in science fiction/fantasy; both are married with children and love animals. Unfortunately, this hasn't translated well into this novel and I suspect it will appeal only to fans or the curious.

I don't think McCaffrey and Ball were deliberately trying to insult; in fact, I believe they were attempting to be humorous in parts in order to balance the tone of the novel - which is necessarily sober when dealing with child labour. Writing about an alien species is unquestionably difficult as we only have our imaginations to go on. Over all, though, McCaffrey and Ball form a distinctly uneasy team and this novel provides no credit to either of their careers.

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