Forerunner: The Defender

Rating:
Summary: Alternate title: Forerunner
Review: Other Andre Norton books which include her Forerunner theme are "Sargasso of Space" (1955), "Exiles of the Stars" (1971), "Forerunner Foray" (1973), "Moon Called" (1982), and "Forerunner: The Second Venture" (1985). In most of these SF novels, Norton describes the ancient Forerunner ruins as vast, underground high technology installations where ordinary human beings can be driven crazy just by the odd angles to the walls, the mazes and tunnels where they're always getting lost, or by the harmful emanations from the ancient and only partly understood machines.

In "Forerunner" (1981) and its sequel, "Forerunner: The Second Venture" (1985), author Norton veers off the super technology highway and onto the mythical road of nature/nurture goddesses. All of a sudden, Forerunners (at least one of them) bear a strong resemblance to Ceres, Persephone, and (if you follow the Witch World novels) Gunnora. In Andre Norton's universe, there was more than one race that preceded humans into space. I just wish that she had differentiated between the technology-based Forerunner civilizations, and the Forerunner civilization that is explicated in this novel, which seems very anti-technology.

"Forerunner" begins in the ancient port of Kuxortal, which has built and rebuilt itself upon the ruins of ancient and decayed civilizations. The lowly Burrow-dwellers sometimes discover artifacts from the past as they tunnel beneath the current city's towers.

Simsa had been a runner and fetcher for an old Burrow-dweller, "until the mists of the riverside burrow bit so far into Old One's crippled bones that her body at last gave up..." She buries her mentor, who had probably rescued Simsa off of a garbage heap as an infant. The old cripple never revealed Simsa's origin to her, but it was obvious that the girl was different from any of the other Burrow-dwellers. Simsa tries to hide her differences--her platinum hair combined with blue-black skin, but she must flee from her only known home when scavengers attempt to loot the treasures that Simsa's ancient mentor had purportedly hidden there. The scavengers also consider Simsa part of the loot, but she fights her way free with the assistance of her retractable claws and her pet zorsal.

Zorsals are one of the best features of this book. They are cute, bat-like creatures with four paws and feathery antennae. Simsa is able to communicate with them on a very primitive thought-band, and they play an integral role in her adventure.

Now that Simsa has been driven from Ferwar's burrow, she attempts to sell her mentor's treasured artifacts to an off-world man who has come to Kuxortal in search of his missing brother. He in turn persuades her to accompany him to the deadly Hard Hills where his historian-brother was last seen.

After a long, difficult journey through the desert, where Simsa and her zorsals almost perish, she and Thom, the outworlder reach the Hard Hills and discover an ancient, alien city. It is here that Simsa learns of her true origin.

There are nice Norton touches in "Forerunner:" the zorsals; the underground healing pool; Simsa's hard and dangerous life in the Burrows; her difficult journey through the desert with Thom. However, the plot is muddied up with too many villains--greedy Guild Lords and skyjackers ('jacks' in Norton's terminology), and too many variations on the nature of the Forerunners.

I also preferred the Simsa at the book's beginning to the Simsa at the end.

However, the zorsals were wonderful throughout.