Acorna the Unicorn Girl – Anne McCaffrey and Margaret Ball

Acorna the Unicorn Girl – Anne McCaffrey and Margaret Ball

     Acorna is another of those books that I read as a teen/young adult that I liked enough that when I saw it at the library I had to take it home and try it again. I had to do a little research after I read it because I didn’t recall something classified as a young adult novel having that many controversial issues in it. Apparently, I was wrong.

     The book starts out with a life pod being launched from a ship under attack containing only a baby. The parents are hoping that the life signs for the baby will be so small as to escape the bad guys notice and the baby will be picked up by someone on their side. The life pod is found later by a group of three human miners on the fringe of explored space. The baby is nothing remotely resembling a human and speaks nothing resembling any of the known human languages. She has flat teeth, a horse like mane of hair that goes from head to, well, tail, and a small horn in the middle of her forehead. They name her Acorna. At this time, humans haven’t discovered aliens or vice versa. When their company gets bought out by a huge conglomerate that wants to mutilate and run tests on Acorna, they rescue her and go on the run. In the process, they come across more people who want to posses her for her uniqueness and one group who can help them but only if Acorna helps them first.

     It is apparently nothing like any of Anne McCaffrey’s other books and it deals with some controversial issues (more on that in a second) and I’d hate to see someone spend actual money on a book and hate it. This book goes into serious detail about child slavery, mutilation, torture, rape, kidnapping, and all of it is being ignored, even condoned, by the government of this shady planet. Acorna chooses to help the children of the planet escape their enslavement and helps as many as she can but there is still the overtone of all those they can’t help as well as the future children who get stuck with that situation. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is a good book and there are nine other books in the series but if you don’t like your books to have an underlying message that is disturbing, give this one a pass.