Should Probably Have Been Titled "Loser" and "Founder"
Amazon says:
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Author: Alan Dead Foster
Title: Lost and Found Genre: fantasy I think I've finally figured it out: there must've been a memo. Yeah, that has to be it: one day, there was a memo. I figure it was about thirty-five years back, and it said something like this: "Based on the ongoing success of such multi-installment series as The Lord of the Rings, we have determined that we will no longer accept single-book submissions. Beginning immediately, all author submissions must comprise a minimum of three books (a 'trilogy'). Longer series will, of course, be welcomed." That would explain why it's been damned near impossible to find a standalone fantasy book in the last three decades or, for that matter, a standalone scifi book. Everything's subtitled "Volume X of the ZZZ Series." Frankly, it gets old. But you gotta get a scifi fix once in awhile, and if you do then it might as well be from the keyboard of one of the greats: Niven, Zelazny, Clarke, Silverberg. And then there's Alan Dean Foster, author of a gazillion previous works, such as the Flinx books (The Tar-Ayim Krang and sequels) and the Icerigger trilogy (did somebody say, "Trilogy"?). His latest offering is Lost and Found, the first installment of - you guessed it - a trilogy. Some things never change - even if they should. Marcus Walker's first ever camping vacation turned out to be a lot longer than he'd expected, both in terms of time and of distance. That'll happen when you and your entire campsite are plucked off the face of the Earth in the middle of the night by eight-foot tall purple aliens with sucker-coated flaps instead of articulated limbs. Marcus and his tent and sleeping bag, not to mention a sizable sliver of the Sierra Nevada, all end up hurtling through space. He's mere "merchandise" to his decidedly un-Barneyish grape-colored captors. Marc's not alone in all this, though: the Vilenjji have plucked captives from hundreds of worlds and stowed them in a gigantic ship - including of all things, a talking dog. That's right, mixed in with hundreds of tentacled, ciliated, flapped, suckered, big-eyed, bug-eyed, hooting, singing, whistling, and wriggling aliens of all manner of fanciful forms, there's one enhanced member of species Canus domesticus; a common mutt from the mean streets of Chicago. He was plucked up while ensconced in the back seat of an abandoned Cadillac. Go figure. Lost and Found being the first book of a trilogy, it naturally cleaves to the mandatory pattern of "part one of the ZZZ Trilogy" (in this case, "The Taken Trilogy"): a fellowship must be formed to embark on a mythic quest. That's exactly what happens: a fellowship forms, including Marc and George (the "highly imaginative" name Marc gives the dog) and two of their fellow captives, both sapient (though strange) alien species. The first is the nominally female Sque (not her real name) a pinkish-purple, silver-eyed and tentacled decapod with twice the smarts of Marc and ten times his attitude. Sque thus provides the obligatory wizard analog. The fourth and final member of the fellowship is Braouk, a gigantic being blessed with the soul of a poet. An angry warrior poet given to wall-busting head-bashing temper tantrums, but a poet nonetheless. Thus is the fellowship formed. The quest is simple, for the fellowship seeks the ultimate goal: freedom. They'd also like to go home, though that might be a bit harder... Though nowhere near as gut-wrenchingly bad as L. Ron Hubbard's monumentally awful ten-volume Mission Earth series, Lost and Found is not going to vie for a Pulitzer this coming year - or a Hugo or Nebula, for that matter. It's throwaway literature, with a central premise (soulless zoo collector alien abductors interested only in profit [Ferengi, anyone {or Ross Perot?}?]) that's been covered dozens, if not hundreds of times before. It suffers from silly dialogue, even if it is from a dog. It also suffers from Foster's irritating tendency to make every single character's name and race unpronounceable. That's not to mention that the book has a predictable plot: since it's the first book of a trilogy, could any reasonable person think that the gang of four won't escape from their captors? As F&SF goes, Lost and Found lies somewhere between a standard-issue fantasy trilogy and a Koontz-like horror story of abduction. Its few redeeming factors are the philosophical musings of the wonderdog and the insistence on tolerance toward (almost) all the strange beings the four encounter. Otherwise it's warmed over trilogy hash. The sad thing? I'll probably read the next two books, too - it's like being unable to tear your eyes away from a train wreck. copyright © 2001 to present by scmrak
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