The story opens with Lissa Windholm and an alien partner coming across a mysterious artifact, evidently left by the Forerunners, on the planet Jonna. But they are not the first to discover this artifact -- a man named Torben Hebo, one of the oldest humans still alive, and his alien partner have got there first. And their interest is profit, as opposed to Lissa's purely scientific motivation. Torben also rather crudely expresses an interest of a different sort in Lissa herself. But disaster strikes, and Lissa and her friend rescue Torben, leading to a reasonable compromise.

That episode serves mainly as a rather clumsy (to my mind) prologue, having little function but to introduce Lissa and Torben. They spend some energy mooning a bit over each other, while Lissa, a key member of a powerful family on Asborg, mounts an expedition to view the scientifically fascinating collision of two black holes, and while Torben goes back to Earth to get his memory scrubbed and to show the reader details of Earth's advanced linked human mind. Lissa's expedition involves the humans in a conflict between factions of the Susaian race. The stories come together again in the following episode, in which a neighboring planet of Asborg is colonized by Susaians, and in which Torben gets involved in an attempt to industrialize this new planet, resisted by Lissa and her Susaian friends, who favor a "greener" approach. The final episode, then, features a further conflict with the bad Susaian faction, and an opportunity to learn something dramatic about the Forerunners.

As my summary might imply, the novel is rather episodic, and the joins between the new episodes and the pre-existing stories show, sometimes uneasily. I wouldn't be surprised if Anderson intended one final revision pass through the book but sadly never had the chance. Still, it's a decent and enjoyable novel, with some nice science-fictional ideas, and some pleasant and interesting main characters. The action is well-handled, and a sense of mystery and wonder at the secrets of the universe, so often central to Anderson's work, is nicely conveyed. This book is by no means Anderson at the top of his form, but he was ever a writer who would occasionally throttle back and produce supremely competent entertainment -- and I think that's what For Love and Glory ends up being. Not an enduring classic, but a book I'm happy to have read.