Star Lord

Star Lord
by Louise Lawrence
Starwanderer Books, an imprint of Harper & Row, 1978, reprinted 1988

It's long been said that, if you're going to go with an overused, bone-dry idea for a story, at least put a fresh spin on it. There's nothing worse than picking up a book, leafing through it, and realizing that you've read it before, just with a different title and a slightly different cast/setting. And while the familiar can be comforting, it can also be deadly boring.

Star Lord is advertised as another alien-crashes-on-Earth-and-is-pursued-by-the-government story -- even the cover, a boy standing in a field with a flying saucer buzzing overhead, offers nothing new. But there are many things that make Star Lord stand head and shoulders above its bone-dry cousins.

First, of course, is the setting, a small town in present-day Wales -- or as present-day as a small town in Wales can get. The people here embrace mysticism and superstition as eagerly as religious faith, and the recently-arrived main characters -- divorcee Enid, her teenage children Rhys and Gwendolyn, and grandfather Hywel -- feel every bit as alien here as does the star lord, an interstellar visitor who is found, bleeding, in the shed on their sheep farm, castaway of a spacecraft that just crashed into a mountain.

Second is Lawrence's writing style. Her choices of words are sheer poetry, evocative of Peter S. Beagle or a streamlined version of Shakespeare. I have often found that a writer's style can often save a bland idea more than an entertaining premise can save bad writing.

And third is the supernatural factor. Aside from the star lord, the book's other heavy fantastical element is the mountain Mawrrhyn. Rather than a geographical feature or background, the mountain is described almost as a diety, a sentient being with a cruel sense of justice. And to get the star lord home before the military finds him, Rhyn and his family must bargain with the mountain.

There is far more to Star Lord than meets the eye, and science fiction lovers must check it out.