ABOUT THE ACORNA BOOKS BY ANNE MCCAFFREY AND ELIZABETH ANN SCARBOROUGH

Not to be confused with the first two in the Acorna series, which you definitely should read because they're about Acorna's birth and childhood. They, however, were written by Anne and Margaret Ball. The first of these is called ACORNA and the second ACORNA'S QUEST. At the end of QUEST, the authors were sort of out of things for Acorna to do and had her fly off into the cosmos to live happily ever after. Then the publishers decided they wanted more and Anne asked me if I could help come up with something new, since Margaret had other committments.

I don't want to spoil QUEST for you but basically all through it Acorna, who is an alien "unicorn girl" raised by 3 human asteroid miners, is trying to get back to her home world.

Fortunately for her, some of her homies arrive to warn her quadrant of a terrible peril, so she hitches a ride back with them.

Well, okay. So she gets to go home to ACORNA'S PEOPLE and has in the course of the last book also done something to avert the terrible peril. Now what? Hmmm--she's back with her homies (the Linyaari) in her 'hood (the new homeworld narhii-Vhiliinyar), true, where everybody looks like her so nobody looks at her as if she were a freak anymore. However, her people are telepathic and she wasn't brought up that way so the skills are new. Also, she was raised by warlike and ferocious human beings who have different customs than the pacifistic and relatively gentle Linyaari. Human mores are all she has known before and many of the Linyaari think humans are pretty disgusting, from what they've seen and heard, so they're not too sure about Acorna. So she personally spends a lot of time trying to get her bearings, assisted by the oldest female of her people, Grandam Naadiina, a young girl named Maati, and the Ancestors who were called unicorns before their alien hosts rescued them from being slaughtered for their horns. Although the Friends and the Ancestors somehow blended to become the Linyaari, the Ancestors still exist as a separate race though nobody knows what happened to the Linyaari.

Her people aren't really mean or snooty, but they are very off-kilter right then because a terrible bug-like race called the Khleevi attacked Vhiliinyar, the Linyaari's original homeworld, and destroyed it completely. There is no reasoning with these buggers. The Linyaari sent ambassadors and the Khleevi tortured them slowly to death and caught the event on tape which they played back in an endless loop for the surviving Linyaari's edification. Nasty. These are also the critters responsible for the death of Acorna's folks.

But at this point, Acorna has not yet been to Vhiliinyar, just the new world. However, someone else stumbles upon the ruins. Enter Jonas P. Becker of Becker and Sons Interplanetary Recycling and Salvage Corp. LTD.

Becker is captain of the flagship, indeed the only ship, of the company line, a patchwork job called The Condor, which he keeps refurbishing from salvaged bits he picks up here and there. His first mate, with whom he has a relationship of more or less guarded hostility, is a salvaged Makahomian Temple Cat (and they're very big and very fierce) he named Roadkill or RK. While on a routine pit stop, Becker and the feline first mate set down on the remains of Vhiliinyar, where RK picks up a likely looking cat toy--a very elongated spiraled cone of an opalescent hue which makes the cantakerous cat purr like a pussycat. Becker likes stones so he collects other specimens of this cat toy and hauls them aboard his ship. Then he and RK head for the market. Along the way, they discover some very unusual traits of RK's new baubles. Basically, that the darn things seem to cure molds, colds, fevers, chills, asthma, cancer, arthritis and rheumatism and make childbirth a pleasure--well, they don't actually test drive all those functions, especially the last one, but they do grow back mangled parts lost in the course of their association, which gives Becker some idea these things are valuable.

At the market, he learns that they resemble the horn worn by the legendary Lady Acorna Harakamian Li, who flew away with other horned people.No sooner has he learned this, than a villainess sends an android henchman to steal the horns for her own nefarious purposes.

UH--then more stuff happens. Suffice it to say that in course of things, the android gets refurbished and reformed and becomes an ally, which I have to tell you because he figures in later books.

Such as ACORNA'S WORLD: Descriptions from now on will be much more terse, since you have the intro down and many of the characters. In ACORNA'S WORLD, Acorna, her friends, and an interesting guy named Aari battle the Khleevi yet again for their homeworld and this time their new homeworld as well.

ACORNA'S SEARCH: You didn't really think we'd let the Khleevi win the battles in WORLD, did you? Perish the thought and perish the Khleevi. With the help of Acorna's adopted rich Uncle Hafiz Harakamian (the uncle of her foster father, asteroid miner Rafik Nadezda), the Linyaari begin reclaiming the ruins of Vhiliinyar, surveying it and excavating it to figure out how to reinstate its topography and ecology and get all the mountains and seas and stuff in the right place. Then folks start disappearing, including Acorna's sweetie, Aari. Her search for Aari and the others lead her to a buried but intact city, an ancient race, and a faultily functioning time device that she believes will lead her back to Aari. However, while others who disappeared only shifted times, Aari for some reason has also shifted in space and no longer seems to be on the planet. Acorna senses that he is still alive but does he phone? No.

ACORNA'S REBELS: What's a girl to do when her true love has disappeared so thoroughly even sitting alone by the time machine for weeks on end doesn't help? The Condor's feline first mate knows what she should do. She should pay attention to the cat, that's what.

To lure Acorna out of her funk. Becker enlists her help on a routine mission which also involves his former sweetie, House Harakamian's head of security, a woman warrior who is, like RK, also Makahomian. It's probably the cat's fault that the original mission gets scrapped when the Condor takes a wrong turn at a worm hole and ends up on Makahomia. There Acorna and Becker learn clues to Nadhari's and RK's pasts and more clues about Aari's whereabouts.

ACORNA'S TRIUMPH: It's about time he shows up! Or does he? Aari is behaving very strangely . Maybe it's a case of "how ya gonna keep him down on Vhiliinyar after he's seen distant time and space" but he's just different and Acorna can't put her finger on it. Nor is she about to lay hands on any other part of him until she figures out the source of her discomfort, and of the violent and scary nightmares that have plagued her since her return from Makahomia.

COMING SOON 2005 : ACORNA'S Daughter Khorii, FIRST WARNING. Okay, here's another spoiler. You know this child has to come from some place and Linyaari mate for life so yeah, sure, Acorna and Aari do get back together and have a daughter, Khorii. Maak, the Condor's android who thinks he is Linyaari, makes a child in his own image to be Khorii's friend, tutor, and protector. Also, often, the thorn in her side and the bane of her existance. She has another companion too, a very mischievous cat named Khiindi who has been with her since she was a baby and he was a kitten. The three of them, plus Acorna, Aari, and Captain Becker, are returning home to Kezdet and Manganos Moonbase to visit Acorna's foster fathers in time to be present at the birth of a sister or brother for Acorna and an aunt or uncle for Khorii. Of course, it doesn't go that smoothly. On the way to Manganos, the Condor encounters an eerie ghost ship full of bodies and an atmosphere that almost makes corpses out of them too. Come to find out, there's a terrible rapidly spreading plague that has decimated the healthy adult population of the quadrant. Since the Linyaari are healers, Aari and Acorna agree to make a detour to save the humans. However, Khorii must stay behind among the alien strangers on Manganos Moonbase. Then, when she and some friends answer a distress call from an infected supply ship orbiting the Moonbase, she finds herself abruptly exiled to the orbiting graveyard. She also discovers that her psychic powers, latent until puberty, have begun to blossom in a very odd and potentially useful direction.