The Space Guardian

by Max Daniels

There is one power beyond all powers!
The search for the legendary heartstone is on--and Lanks Mhoss, officer of the Guardian Institute, is on her way.

Using her gifts as a Changeling to mold her physical shape into any form imaginable, Lahks--with her gallant comrades, Stoat and Shom--tackles the horrors of the unknown in a never-ending quest.

Through ferocious battles with fire-eating dragons and amazing encounters with the galaxy's beast of burden--the two-humped drom--to the happy discover of the "Laughing City of the Changeling," the dauntless trio is determined not to fail. For once they possess the magnificent stone, Lahks alone will hold the power to alter the entire universe!

Genres: Science Fiction, Aliens

174 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1978

Reviews

[Nicholas Perez]

Max Daniels was a pen name for Roberta Gellis. I am assuming that, like many women writing in the 60s and 70s of SFF, she used a male pen name for some of her first works.

Thanks to Half-Price Books for having a copy of this.

[Ann aka Iftcan]

One of only 2 books by Max Daniels, it is a good yarn. In it, we have a female Guardian who is half human--and who hides this fact. Her father, also a Guardian, has disappeared and she heads off to find him. She stops at a planet that she senses has some connection to him, and, while there meets a couple of Hunters from off the planet. The world is incredibly harsh and has only one export--a mysterious stone that causes unusual reactions in everyone who touches them. These stones are what the Hunters are after--and what our heroine is also after. The search for the stones--and the efforts to keep them--are fast paced and exciting.

If you can find a copy of this book, its well worth the trouble.

[Small Fish]

This book is not finished.

The Space Guardian starts with an enthusiasm for space fantasy I found refreshing and exciting. This enthusiasm may have been the author's own newness to the genre. But it carried me in with a sense of hope for the story... which became tenuous when a mentally disabled man (Shom) appeared on page. Books like this have always treated disabled people with unbearable pandering or eugenics. But by god The Space Guardian did not need to leap so enthusiastically headfirst into the eugenics.

Shom is callously discarded less than half a chapter after the protagonists insist they can't leave him behind. When protagonist Lahks describes her job of "instigating mass death for freudian eugenics reasons" her companion Stoat just shrugs. Doubly frustrating, this bit of information is introduced at a prime time to bring conflict into their burgeoning romance and he, a jewish man who has outlived the entire planet that wanted his people dead, seems perfect to offer an alternate perspective on the universe. Instead both the romance and conflict turn immediately static and remain that way for the rest of the book.

It feels like the author wanted to make a series out of this, but gave up on both series and book before the end. The inciting incidents of Lahks' missing father and the mysterious Heartstones are forgotten and trivialized respectively. A number of potential conflicts are introduced and ignored throughout the book, and everything is left in a kind of fog

The intriguing ideas that marked the beginning of the book peter out into dune ripoffs and low quality shock, and it continues petering until the book is dragging itself over the finish line without even bringing the plot.