Ohh,
bargain bin, you lottery of surprise and displeasure, how you hold our fate in
your hands. Delight or disappointment
just a penny or two away, your risk elevates the shock of surprise and softens
the fall of displeasure. The latter
significant, with L. Neil Smith’s 1988 Taflak
Lysandra, a bargain book I found for less than a dollar, a softening
was needed. Core sci-fi which makes the
simplest of demands on the reader, it is perhaps best appreciated by the YA
audience or the juvenile libertarian—if at all.
Taflak Lysandra is the story of one
young lady, Lysandra, and her underleaf (yes, under leaf) adventure among the alien
Taflak. Like something out of a Saturday
morning cartoon, Lysandra, her coyote father (father’s brain, coyote’s body),
an eccentric professor, and a yeti (not what you think) embark on a journey
through the leafy core of a planet in their subfolia ship to explore regions
unknown. Adventure, of course,
ensues. Aliens and cabals, fights and
battles, and, naturally, the ever-present Sea of Leaves and its mysterious
depths.
