Forerunner Foray
Just finished reading "Forerunner Foray" by Andre Norton, originally published by The Viking Press back in 1973.
I suspect that I'm about to court some controversy with this review, but I firmly believe that "Forerunner Foray" is one of Andre's stand-alone novels that only bears a rather tenuous link to the her Warlock duet. Although it does make make reference to Warlock and Ris Lantee is the son of Chris Nordholm and Shann Lantee, "Forerunner Foray" doesn't really continue the story of Warlock and is set entirely on different worlds outside of Warlock.
Also odd about this novel is that it includes a disclaimer of sorts from Andre about parapsychology and psychometry, defending the works of T.C. Lethbridge, a British archaeologist who embraced some rather "unorthodox methods" in Anglo-Saxon studies.
As a child on the luxury world of Korwar, Ziantha was rescued from an intergalactic refugee-camp-turned-slum called the Dipple. A member of the all-powerful Guild discovered that the girl had super-normal talent, including the ability to 'read' objects, and he trains her up as a thief.
Ziantha has broken into the apartment of High Lord Jucundus, loaded to the gills with high-tech gizmos and, of course, her own esper abilities. She psychometrizes (reads) the microrecordings that she was sent to find and is about to leave the apartment, when she is almost felled by a psychic demand for her attention. It is a dusty lump of clay on Lord Jucundus's knick-knack table. Ziantha resists the urge to steal it, but the next morning she returns to a park next to the apartment building and apports (psychically transports) the ugly little object into her possession.
Her Guild masters discover Ziantha's extra-curricular thievery, and after their initial anger they become intrigued by the strange object which has psychically bonded itself to their errant apprentice. Buried within the clay is a Forerunner artifact called a focus-stone.
The alien artifact has an agenda of its own. It wishes to be reunited with its 'twin' and leads Ziantha and her masters to a burned-off planet, then hurtles the psychic back through time, into the body of a war slave who has been chained into her captor's tomb!
As she struggles to breathe, Ziantha-now-Vintra realizes that the corpse beside her is moving. Another psychic has been dragged through time by the focus-stone and dumped into the body of the deceased enemy general.
Ris Lantee is the valiant hero of "Forerunner Foray." He suffers an even worse fate than Ziantha in that he is transferred into the body of the dead warrior and ruler, Turan and must spent a large part of the novel keeping the corpse reanimated while he and Ziantha quest for the second focus-stone.
Ris-now-Turan is finally in such bad shape that Ziantha must make a solo quest further back into the burned-out planet's history in order to recover the second focus stone.
Aside from revealing that this branch of the Forerunners were involved in an armed conflict, Andre doesn't reveal too much about the alien races that proceeded Humanity and others into the galaxy.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
TEN STARS!
https://www.amazon.com/Forerunner-For...
I suspect that I'm about to court some controversy with this review, but I firmly believe that "Forerunner Foray" is one of Andre's stand-alone novels that only bears a rather tenuous link to the her Warlock duet. Although it does make make reference to Warlock and Ris Lantee is the son of Chris Nordholm and Shann Lantee, "Forerunner Foray" doesn't really continue the story of Warlock and is set entirely on different worlds outside of Warlock.
Also odd about this novel is that it includes a disclaimer of sorts from Andre about parapsychology and psychometry, defending the works of T.C. Lethbridge, a British archaeologist who embraced some rather "unorthodox methods" in Anglo-Saxon studies.
As a child on the luxury world of Korwar, Ziantha was rescued from an intergalactic refugee-camp-turned-slum called the Dipple. A member of the all-powerful Guild discovered that the girl had super-normal talent, including the ability to 'read' objects, and he trains her up as a thief.
Ziantha has broken into the apartment of High Lord Jucundus, loaded to the gills with high-tech gizmos and, of course, her own esper abilities. She psychometrizes (reads) the microrecordings that she was sent to find and is about to leave the apartment, when she is almost felled by a psychic demand for her attention. It is a dusty lump of clay on Lord Jucundus's knick-knack table. Ziantha resists the urge to steal it, but the next morning she returns to a park next to the apartment building and apports (psychically transports) the ugly little object into her possession.
Her Guild masters discover Ziantha's extra-curricular thievery, and after their initial anger they become intrigued by the strange object which has psychically bonded itself to their errant apprentice. Buried within the clay is a Forerunner artifact called a focus-stone.
The alien artifact has an agenda of its own. It wishes to be reunited with its 'twin' and leads Ziantha and her masters to a burned-off planet, then hurtles the psychic back through time, into the body of a war slave who has been chained into her captor's tomb!
As she struggles to breathe, Ziantha-now-Vintra realizes that the corpse beside her is moving. Another psychic has been dragged through time by the focus-stone and dumped into the body of the deceased enemy general.
Ris Lantee is the valiant hero of "Forerunner Foray." He suffers an even worse fate than Ziantha in that he is transferred into the body of the dead warrior and ruler, Turan and must spent a large part of the novel keeping the corpse reanimated while he and Ziantha quest for the second focus-stone.
Ris-now-Turan is finally in such bad shape that Ziantha must make a solo quest further back into the burned-out planet's history in order to recover the second focus stone.
Aside from revealing that this branch of the Forerunners were involved in an armed conflict, Andre doesn't reveal too much about the alien races that proceeded Humanity and others into the galaxy.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
TEN STARS!
https://www.amazon.com/Forerunner-For...
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