Garry thinks he knows something that all of humankind would kill to have, the secret to the Faster-Than-Light drive. He believes that it is inside a Kurs-ggthan artifact. When a little man enters his father-s pawnshop and offers to sell the very artifact Garry has been searching for, he is bewildered by his good fortune. But he may not be as lucky as he thinks. Now that he holds the key to the drive, his father-s business has been destroyed, Garry-s on the run, his father is in critical condition and interstellar agents lurk on every corner. Then Garry is posed the question, is he helping to advance the human race or aiding in destroying it?
Yesterday's Pawn (1989) 254 pages by W. T. Quick
This is a novel where the hero starts off with no knowledge of what's to come. I think this is a kind of literary technique to allow the reader to feel like they are on the same footing as the hero. I can think of Nine Princes in Amber and Lord Valentine's Castle as two examples. Now Garry didn't have amnesia, but he was just seventeen, had never been anywhere but H'hogoth. Garry was in charge of his father's Pawn shop for the night when a customer brought in an alien artifact. He buys it, and not too much later Hyarl Thomas comes back with the receipt to claim it. Garth, Garry's dad, isn't selling it back to Thomas. The pawn shop ends up blown up, and Garth in the hospital, and Garry on the run, and knowing practically nothing.
As Garry is on the run, he does find help, but doesn't know whether or not to trust them or not. Garry is pretty surly with all of them, Frego, Chasm, Glory. As the story goes on, he gets a information from the action, then questions his "friends" and gets a bit more.
The story felt a little disjointed to me, it didn't flow. Sometimes I didn't pick up on the meaning. Chasm has some intel on Thomas, and provides Frego and Garry some weapons and troopers to investigate. When a trooper was killed, I thought how callous that they didn't even mention his name. Then when recounting the story later the word mech was used.
The ending was too existential or abstract. Reminded me kind of the end of Jack of Eagles.
