Yesterday's Pawn

by W.T. Quick

When a rat faced man enters his father's pawnshop with a stolen artifact from the ancient Kurs'ggthan race, Garry becomes the object of a hunt by interstellar, time-traveling agents

Genres: Science Fiction

254 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published July 1, 1989

About the author

W.T. (William Thomas) Quick, a native of Indiana, lives in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco. He is the author of twenty-eight novels, including the seminal cyberpunk cult hit DREAMS OF FLESH AND SAND (in which he invented The Matrix), the best-selling prehistoric thriller THE LAST MAMMOTH, a series of six novels entitled QUEST FOR TOMORROW co-authored with William Shatner, dozens of shorter works of fiction, and several screenplays for film and television.

Quick also writes under the pseudonyms QUENTIN THOMAS, SEAN KIERNAN, AND MARGARET ALLAN

Reviews

[Jason Bleckly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book started really well as YA action adventure to recover an ancient artefact of a lost alien race rumoured to be an FTL drive from bad guys who had murdered the protagonist’s father. A bit coming-of-age, a bit revenge, lot’s of action on alien planets. It wasn’t thought provoking cutting edge SF, but good escapist entertainment. And better written than the average. But then halfway through the wheels fall of the story. There are some great ideas in the second half relating to FTL, relativity, time travel, and black holes, but the story from the first half of the book becomes almost irrelevant. It becomes a group of people standing around explaining the ideas, the history of the universe, and the nature of reality to each other. The ideas in the second half are good, but without a story to explore them it’s a bit of a chore to read. As a result, what was shaping up to be a really good entertaining read, is a mildly disappointing read. That said I would read another book by him, the ideas are worth it, but the story needs evening out.

[John Loyd · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.