Another Star Trek alumnus gets bitten by the writing bug. Here, it's Burton, who played Lt. Cmdr. Geordi LaForge on Star Trek: The Next Generation. His fiction debut is a terribly earnest and straightforward novel about the horrors that occur after America is shattered by a breakdown in race relations. Dr. Rene Reynolds is the inventor of the Neuro-Enhancer, a device with almost mystical healing abilities that also creates telepathic powers in its wearers. After Reynolds demonstrates the device to financiers, she is kidnapped?but not before she desperately thrusts the only existing copies of her computer disks into the hands of a homeless man, Leon Cane, whose life was shattered during the race riots. When Reynolds sends out a telepathic call for help, Cane, Amy LaDue, a plucky child living on the streets, and Jacob Fire Cloud, a Lakota medicine man with a vision, head toward Chicago to aid her and to save the world from destruction. Burton's workmanlike prose is sufficient for the task of displaying his characters' virtues, but the world he builds is muddled and less than credible. His name recognition, however, along with the novel's humane and caring moral message, should ensure respectable sales. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.