Helm

Leland de Laal, son of a great lord on a distant colony planet, dares to wear the ancient glass helmet containing all of Earth's lost wisdom and is sent into exile to deal with the awesome powers the helmet has unleashed. 10,000 first printing.

A new science fiction coming-of-age adventure from the author of Wildside (1996), etc. Robot probes from Earth terraformed the ringed planet Agatsu, but the unscrupulous use of an ultimate brainwashing device, the ``imprinter,'' resulted in nuclear war. Survivors on the Moon sent a colony ship, its occupants in suspended animation, to Agatsuand, to ensure order and stability in the new colony, also included some imprinters (Gould deals with this necessary background in the first few pages). On Agatsu, many years later, Leland de Laal, youngest son of Guide Dulan de Laal of Noramland, climbs the Needle rock to prove he's no weakling, finds the Glass Helm (the last imprinter), and puts it on. It fills his head with a dark, indigestible mass of knowledge. Dulan, furioushe'd intended his eldest son, Dexter, to don the Helmorders that Leland be treated with cold, calculated brutality, and finally sends him to the aikido school at Red Rock Station. Leland, prompted by a strange inner voice, finds that he's somehow become an aikido master. Gradually, he acquires other skills, too. Meanwhile, the ambitious High Steward Siegfried Montrose of rival Cotswold prepares for a war of conquest. Leland, of course, will eventually defeat Siegfried, but first he must integrate the knowledge given him by the Helm, discovering along the way that he now contains the personalities of the people on the Moon who set up the colony project. A well-handled, often persuasive drama, but rather too cozy and predictable. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Faced with insufficient resources in their overcrowded shelters, the Moon-based survivors of a war that has rendered Earth uninhabitable send most of their population to establish a colony on a world in orbit around another star. Since these survivors can't spare any technology, they "imprint" the colonists with enough rudimentary knowledge to insure that hygiene and literacy will lead to an eventual rebirth of techno-culture. Flash forward a few hundred years, and the colony is a success, glowing with rustic charm. But there's an apple in this Eden?one of the imprinting devices, which somehow survived transit and is reverently referred to as "the Helm." When teenaged Leland De Laal places it on his head, he unwittingly injects the lost wisdom of the ancients?science, medicine, foreign languages?into his mind. Although Leland's father, Dulan, the Steward of Laal, is then forced to raise his youngest son as his successor, the family's fortunes are overshadowed by the threat of war. Because his father is tough on him, Leland grows into a hard warrior prince, tender enough to fall for the pretty Marilyn de Noram but not shrewd enough to recognize how his enemies scheme to take over the family fortress. The only magic in this amusing mix of SF and fantasy is the disembodied voice that "speaks" in Leland's head, but fantasy fans should enjoy all the pageantry and sword fights that lead to Leland smashing his enemies and reclaiming his heritage.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.