Forerunner

In a place far away, Simsa, a young orphan, fights to survive in an intergalactic ghetto. But she was different than any of the others around her.
Then the Star Men came, and she learned that perhaps she was far more than she had ever believed

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LibraryThing member JohnFair

Simsa was unusual even to the denizens of the Burrows of the great trading city of Kuxortal, with her skin colour and hair of silver but Ferwar had rescued her as a babe and seen to it that the youngster was able to survive in the harsh world of the Burrows. When her protector died, Simsa was

forced to move on and her attempts to trade some of the lesser pieces of Ferwar's hoard to the crew of a planeted Free Trader bring her into the orbit of Thom T'Seng who seems only to be interested in castoffs of the ancient past but soon entangles Simsa and her zorsals in a quest deep into the desert heartlands of the continent in search of his missing brother. In that blasted country Simsa finds the secrets of her inheritance and Thom finds an illegal trade in Ancient tech.Will they be able to survive their revelations? The book leaves this question hanging, Almost as if Ms Norton was planning a sequel but never got round to it - although written quite a while before her death, Norton was quite ill for a while. Apart from that rather sudden ending, though, it's quite a decent book and though there are mystical overtones, they aren't laid on too heavily so if you like your science fiction fairly hard, you won't be disappointed. ANd it's illustrated, at least in my edition of the paperback!

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