Andre Norton was one of the seminal science fiction and fantasy writers. Most of her books were series, of which she created nearly twenty. Most of the books in each series were written closely together, but in the 80's and 90's she returned to several of her earliest series with the help of other authors.
Early Adventure Novels
...thanks to Gunner on Amazon, from whom I stole most of this section...
"Raised in America, Michael Karl learns at eighteen that he is heir to the throne of Morvania, a Balkan kingdom threatened by revolution and by the sinister Werewolf, a mountain marauder of more than human reputation whose followers may be less than human." "The moment he arrives in Morvania, Michael Karl is plunged into a seething plot and counterplot, and deadly danger. His death would greatly benefit some very powerful adversaries. Michael embarks on a desperate, thrilling scheme. If it succeeds, the future of Morvania will be changed for the good. If he fails Michael will die..."
The Prince Commands is Andre Norton's first book. according to late grand mistress of science fiction and fantasy's Author's Note: "Once, some few years ago, a boy begged a story of me. It was to be of "sword fights and impossible things" I complied as best I could with this imaginary tale of Courts and Castles, Crown Princes and Communists. The telling of it was not of days or weeks, but in months. Here, John, is your story of "impossible thing."
I don't know who John was, but the whole community of Science Fiction and Fantasy readers owes John a great deal. Andre Norton wrote more an a hundred novels. She was noted for having found success through writing young adult and children's stories. She was the first woman to have been awarded Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy and the Nebula Grand Master Awards. Pretty good for a librarian from Cleveland, Ohio.
Judith Tar at Tor.com writes:
It’s a Ruritanian Romance, a wildly popular genre that was rather tapering off by the Thirties, but it never went away. It’s resurrected itself frequently ever since, taking new forms in the process.
Probably the best-known example of the genre these days is Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda (1894), but Norton refers in the book to another imaginary kingdom which spawned a whole series, George Barr McCutcheon’s Graustark. In short, The Prince Commands &c. is fanfic, and joyously and forthrightly so.
It checks all the boxes. Orphaned Michael Karl has just turned eighteen. He’s been raised in isolation by his strict and unloving uncle, with no knowledge of who he is. All he knows is that his parents were killed when he was a baby, and he is very rich and he lives on a fortified estate somewhere in America, and he’s forbidden to communicate with anyone outside. He has a thing for very spirited, high-bred mares, one of whom is his favorite riding horse, and he does everything he can to slip out from under the Colonel’s thumb.
Then suddenly everything changes. Michael Karl is introduced to a trio of skeevy characters as “His Highness.” He is, it turns out, the long-lost heir to the throne of Morvania, a tiny kingdom in the Balkans. Now he’s been summoned to claim his inheritance.
Michael Karl has no desire to do any such thing. He’s basically a prisoner, but the very first opportunity he gets, after he’s traveled all the way to the border of Morvania, he sneaks off the royal train and does his best to be captured by the local bandit, Black Stefan, also known as the Werewolf. Black Stefan has a gang of men in wolf masks and a pack of actual wolves, and he is, or so it’s said, a Communist. He’s all about fighting for the people against the wicked royals.
Michael Karl’s plan is to get captured, raise hell about being an American citizen, and get returned home. But it doesn’t turn out at all as he expects. The bandit is a lot badder, for one thing. He manages another escape and ends up in the capital city, the beautiful medieval town of Rein. There he’s taken in by a fellow American, a journalist, who is staying in a house belonging to the noble Duke Johann, and proceeds to hide in plain sight till he can be shipped back to the States.
There’s a lot going on. The bandits. The plot to put Michael Karl on the throne. Another plot to install his evil cousin, one of the trio he met in the Colonel’s house, the nasty Marquisa Cobentz. The previous king, Urlich Karl, is presumed dead, supposedly killed by the bandit. Various subplots and sub-subplots and intrigues and stratagems. There’s another lovely war mare, the Lady Spitfire, and sword fights and gun fights and knife fights and a long, fraught Battle of the Cathedral Steps.
While Michael Karl is hiding out, he serves as a secretary to the journalist, Frank Ericson. Ericson is into a great number of things, including passing secret messages both written and spoken, the latter in a very pretty set of codes and passwords. There are secret passages, hidden peepholes, plots and conspiracies both for and against the throne. And, of course, disguises. Many disguises.
And, oh indeed yes, a gay romance. I have no idea if young Alice, who one day would be Andre, had any idea what she was doing when she wrote the love affair of Michael Karl and the man he knows as Ericson. It’s not just the way Michael Karl dwells on Ericson’s physical beauty and his remarkable charm, or the way Ericson teasingly and tenderly calls Michael Karl “boy.” The one time Michael Karl interacts with a female human who is clearly interested in him, he’s repulsed. He saves his passion for his friend/brother in arms/SPOILER.
Those two are in love, and it’s a true romance. In the end Michael Karl has to make the ultimate romantic choice: to keep the promise he made to leave as soon as his job is done, or to stay with his beloved. With the classic tension-builder: Does he love me? Does he not? Why won’t he speak the words I yearn to hear?
In 1934 this had to run below the radar, and there were strong cultural barriers to letting it be any more obvious than it is. In 2020 of course, we’re riding the romantic rollercoaster right along with Michael Karl, and rooting for him to get it together with his love in the end.
This is such a bright and sprightly book. It doesn’t read like postwar Norton at all. Like Ralestone Luck, it’s full of wit and sparkle and humor. The characters have an actual inner life, with hints of complex emotions. It’s almost sad to compare it with the earnest, often plodding prose and two-dimensional characterization of her later works. As influential as they were and are, and as readable as most of them remain, she lost something somewhere between the Thirties and the Fifties, and never managed to get it back.
Ralestone Luck is the story of a sword known as the luck of Lorne., a great blade forged during the Crusades by an Arab astrologer. It's been gone for over a century. Now the Ralestones must find it or lose every thing they have. Judith Tar at Tor.com writes:
Of all the Norton books I’ve read so far, Ralestone Luck has both delighted and horrified me the most. According to the introduction to The Andre Norton Megapack, this was her first novel, written while she was in high school, though it didn’t appear in print until about a decade later, in 1938, as her second published novel.
I had no idea what to expect, except that it would not be science fiction and would probably have a historical bent. It turns out to be a contemporary, set in the Thirties, but it’s steeped in history. There’s a very old family with very old secrets, a crumbling castle that’s purportedly haunted—in the Louisiana bayou, no less—and a series of mysteries to solve. Also, pirates. And the Crusades. And rogue oil drillers.
When I was in high school, I would have eaten this with the biggest spoon I could get my hands on. It begins with a medieval legend attached to the Ralestone family, as represented by a trio of bright young things tooling along in a somewhat rattletrap roadster. Rupert is almost a decade older than Val and Ricky—short for Valerius and Richanda. Their parents are dead, Rupert is their guardian, and they’re in financial straits, reduced to moving into the partially renovated and mostly ruinous family manse. Which, naturally, has a resident ghost.
The three young Ralestones hope, in varying degrees, to find the lost Luck of the family. It’s an actual physical object, though they’re not totally sure what it is. Just that it attached itself to the family during the Crusades, brought them centuries worth of luck, and followed them from England to Louisiana, until it was lost in a fatal conflict between twin brothers. The family’s fortunes have been on a downhill slide ever since.
To add to the fun, there’s now a rival claimant for the property. If he wins the case, the siblings will be straight out of luck. Why, they might have to make their own way in the world, rather than survive on what’s left of the family fortune.
There’s also a lovely young lady artist named Charity, who rents the carriage house and earns a living illustrating potboilers for a New York publisher. One of her models is a laconic swamp denizen named Jeems, who happens to look just like Val, who takes after the slight, dark, French-descended branch of the family, as opposed to the tall, red-haired, pale-skinned branch as represented by Rupert and Ricky.
Keeping all of this going, managing the household and looking after the property, are the Loyal Retainers: stalwart Sam and his formidable wife Lucy and their large and obedient family. Because of course our young aristocrats can’t be left to do their own cooking and cleaning, though they do expect to do just that when they first move in. No, Sam and Lucy inform them, that won’t do. They will be Looked After, and that is that.
The house is an actual castle, complete with hidden doorways, secret passages, and tunnels constructed to store pirate loot—that having been the occupation of the original builder of the manse. Though smuggler and privateer might be a better description: his activities were quasi-legal and at least marginally acceptable to the society of the time.
It’s grand fun. Of course we find out what the Luck is, and who Jeems really is, and what the oil prospectors are up to and whether the rival claimant really is who he says he is. And as for the lovely Charity, well.
The best part for me, ghosts and medieval legends and piracy aside, is the subplot (one of the many) about the “scout” for the publisher who comes down in search of the author of a synopsis and partial of an unfinished ms. that is, the scout declares, absolutely brilliant and his boss wants the author found and signed immediately. This glimpse of the publishing world of eighty years ago is just so precious—when a publisher would actively go hunting unknown talent, and offer a contract based on five chapters and a synopsis. These days, that only happens when the author is a celebrity with a serious platform. Otherwise you’d better have a finished, polished ms., you probably need to send it through an agent, and you’re dealing with a giant corporation instead of a small personal company.
Sigh. Those were the days.
Reading this was like digging around in my grandparents’ bookshelves. My grandmother loved this kind of book and had a nice collection of mostly hardcovers, except for the large, catalogue-like, heavily illustrated Hollywood edition of a book that was a clear antecedent of this one, Gone With the Wind. Gothic romance (though the romance here, true to Norton’s long career, is minimal and tacked on at the end), sneering villains, mysteries, castles, hidden treasures, it’s all there. And it’s written in a bright, breezy, thoroughly Thirties style, remarkably like the romantic-comedy films of the time.
That style is delightful. Later Norton is anything but bright or breezy. The word that comes to mind in thinking of her later work is earnest. Her subject matter is serious, she has important things to say, and there’s no time to be frivolous.
I can’t help but think that World War II and all that came after affected her profoundly. This work of her youth has some awareness of the earlier world war (she was born in 1912 so would probably not have remembered much about the war itself), and there are indications that the crash of 1929 and the Depression affected the fate of the siblings, but their world is a much sunnier, less challenging place than the worlds she wrote after the war.
Just knowing what was happening while she was writing this book and embarking on what proved to be an amazingly long career, and what was about to happen in the world, makes this novel a very interesting and complex reading experience. There are hints of what she would become: the late and hasty romantic element, the tropism toward the fantastic, the love for adventures in dark underground places. Val has a disability, a leg injured in a plane crash, which looks ahead to Norton’s many disabled protagonists.
And then there’s the part that outright horrified me. The racism. Oh ye gods, is that bad. And yes, longtime commenters, it is absolutely of its time.
This is the era that went wild over Gone With the Wind. The romance of the Old South, the myth of the happy slaves happily serving their beloved masters on the plantations, the romantic aristocrats fighting for their Lost Cause with their loyal slaves beside them—it’s all there. Complete with dialect as thick as molasses.
Oh, the stereotypes. Big, massive, loyal Sam, who adamantly refuses to let the descendants of the old masters pay him or any of his family for their services. Heroically plump, forthright, masterful Lucy with her painfully marcel-waved hair, ordering her pack of children and her husband about and taking charge of the young Ralestones—she’s played, I’m sure, by the great Hattie McDaniel.
It really is horrifying. Lucy gets a touch of humanity when the house fills up with random and semi-random white people; she looks tired, and she’s a bit stretched to look after it all. But she’s still a superwoman, and she never flags in her mission to make sure all the white folks are properly looked after.
Because that, of course, is the purpose of black people. To serve white people. Their dialect is a way of othering them, and it works.
Jeems also speaks dialect not too different from the black people’s, but we learn right up front that he’s really very intelligent and he only speaks swamp patois because he wants to. Jeems is white, which means that even when he’s a stereotype, we have to understand that he’s better than that. It’s a point of pride for him to talk the way he does. Versus the black people, for whom this is their assigned and ineluctable role in life.
Norton found her way out of this later, not always completely successfully, but now I see where she came from, I’m a fair bit more impressed by what she did in her more mature works. She learned to see the humanity in all ethnicities, and tried hard to convey it in her works.
Follow the Drum They followed their king into exile and when they returned to claim their rightful inheritance, a cry of "Treason" sent them running for their lives. Johanna and her brother, Gerrit had waited their whole lives for a real home in England, instead of the military camp tents they had come to know. But on their arrival in England, Gerrit was framed for treason. He managed to escape the noose, only to be sold into slavery in America. And so began Johanna's determined odyssey to find Gerrit, and to carve for him a grand home out of the Maryland wilderness where few men--and certainly no women dared to go. With courage, hope, and the help of a mysterious Irish nobleman, himself a slave, Johanna slowly discovered that it was a husband, not a brother, for whom she yearned.
Rogue Reynard another
curiosity in the bibliography of Andre Norton. Rogue Reynard is a
retelling of the legend of "The Fox and The Hound," told with Norton'
usual strong storytelling sense. Like many of Norton's early
books, it gives you the sense that she's simply out to tell a good story,
and she doesn't care what form it takes. In this case, she uses more
modern language and sensibilities (well, modern for the 1940's when it
was written) and applies them to an ancient legend. It's interesting to
see that Norton doesn't "dumb down" the story for children, but instead
chooses to go with the older versions of the story, which include some
pretty graphic violence. (Derek - GoodReads) Scarface: the boy Scarface watched the lights of Tortuga dim as the Naughty Lass stood out for the open sea. The Spanish Main promised rich prizes for Captain Cheap and his pirate crew. And this time Cheap had set his sights high—for no less a prey than Sir Robert Scarlett, his lifelong enemy, and Her Majesty’s fleet at Bridgetown. His plan was daring. Muskets roared and swords flashed as redcoats and pirates fought savagely. The fate of Bridgetown hung in the balance—and with it the secret of Scarface’s true identity.
Huon Of The Horn "This is a book that belongs with the great company of the hero tales. It is the later part of the Charlemagne saga, coming after the death of Roland at Roncevaux. Huon, Duke of Bordeaux, is betrayed by the knight Amaury, just as Roland is betrayed by the Ganelon. To redeem himself in the eyes of the emperor, Huon is sent on a difficult, practically impossible mission to Babylon, which is in the hands of the Saracens--Charlemagne's bitter enemies..."The story is stirring and inspiring. Huon has something of Roland's qualities: charm, courage, a romantic appeal, and the fiery spirit of youth."
Murders for Sale aka Sneeze On Sunday: When Fredericka Wing arrives in South Sutton, Massachusetts, a tiny New England town, it seems an ideal place for a working summer vacation. She plans on managing Miss Hartwell's bookstore while working on her own writing. She never dreamed she would find a body in a hammock in her own backyard. Someone brutally murdered Catherine Clay, an heir to the Sutton fortune. And more violence follows. Together with Peter Mohun, a professor at a local college, Fredericka sets out to discover the murderer's identity ... and unravel the secrets of the wealthy and powerful Sutton family!
Yankee Privateer Picaresque adventure in full regalia with its background the privateers of our infant nation during the American Revolution. Young Fitzhugh Lyon, a poor and embittered relation of a rich Virginia family, is going through Baltimore to join the army when he is by accident shanghaied aboard the Retaliation, an intrepid ship without guns, captained by one Crofts. The mistake has been made by Lieutenant Ninnes, and Crofts, finding it out too late, gives Fitz an officer's berth and a chance, as the battle of men and ships plays itself out. After several successful raids, they are captured and put in Plymouth's Old Mill prison. An ingenious escape is plotted and executed, and Fitz' sojourn in England brings the further satisfaction of a successful outcome to a duel fought with one of his English relatives, before he escapes to France. He finds Captain Crofts again, and a softened and repentant Ninnes and a new ship readying for further adventure.
Stand to Horse To Ritchie Peters, a raw recruit in the First Dragoons, the winter of 1859 when he was first stationed at Santa Fe was a tough one. The Apaches attacked and raided in even the foulest weather, and the dragoons had no choice but to go after them, often to meet death by violence, starvation, or freezing. Ritchie slowly adjusted to this life of great hardships, but also of deep loyalties and friendships, and eventually came completely under the spell of this strange and fascinating country. He had "drunk of these waters" and was "part of this land."
Ride Proud, Rebel! is a Civil War novel set in the western theater during the final days of the war. Drew Rennie has been serving as a cavalry scout in Confederate general John Hunt Morgan's command for two years, having left home in 1862 after a final break with his harsh grandfather, who despised him since his birth because of his mother's runaway marriage to a Texan. Already a seasoned veteran at eighteen, during the final year of conflict Drew has the additional responsibility of looking out for his headstrong fifteen-year-old cousin Boyd, who has run away from home to join Morgan's command and has a lot to learn in the school of hard knocks the army provides. The story follows the two of them and a new friend, a Texas trooper named Anson Kirby who provides both common sense and light comic relief, through campaigns in Kentucky, Tennessee and later on deeper into the South, first with Morgan and later under Forrest.
Rebel Spurs Drew Rennie, discharged from Forrest's Confederate scouts, has come to Arizona in search of the father he hadn't known he had. Drew is posing as Drew Kirby in order to meet Hunt Rennie, the legendary Don Cazar, owner of a matchless range and prize stallions. Things become complicated with a rebel-hating Army commander, local brigands claiming to be Rebel troops, Don Cazar's adopted son, horse racing, horse theft, and more.
Early Sci-Fi
Bullard of the Space Patrol is a sort of Horatio Hornblower of the Space patrol, but written for the YA reader. This is a collection of stories edited and introduced by Norton. This one is certainly dated, what with it's science rooted in early atomics (The ship uses cannon with explosive shells, "space torpedoes' and has armor). It also some flavor of the Tom Swift novels. Old School Hard Science SF
Sea Siege
is a standalone SF novel. Twenty-five years after the end of World War
II, the threat of war is coming to a peak. East and West have been
fighting a covert war for decades, with occasional flare ups into hot
war. Now the red plague is killing fish throughout the globe and
something strange is happening in the ocean depths. In this novel, Griff
Gunston is very upset with his father's lack of attention and casual
distrust. Recently, his father returned and took Griff to live with him
on San Isadore in the West Indies. Dr. Gunston is investigating the
changes in the seas under in a joint American-British project. Griff is
discussing the war news with Chris and Rob when Captain Murdock rows to
the ship. He brings the latest information about the St. John --
another small interisland ship -- which had been found drifting without
crew. Then Mosely Peeks, a conch fisherman, brings word of a dupee
grounded on the island. Captain Murdock and Griff discover the dupee
buried under sea birds and surrounded by crabs. They are amazed at the
sight, for the large sea creature looks like a storybook dragon. Still,
something is happening in the ocean that is surreal. Humanity has bombed
itself into the apocalypse, but something in the sea has helped the
destruction to occur. The worst is yet to come.Star Gate: Almost five centuries past, Terrans had landed their ships on Gorth. Now the Terrans have determined that their presence was not good for the natives and decided to depart Gorth. The summons had gone out to all Terrans and their offspring to gather at the ships. But some did not want to venture into space, so they devised a way to cross timelines. Kincar s'Rud is Daughter's Son and heir by blood to Styr's Holding. Yet his uncle Jord s'Wurd opposed Kincar's inheritance of the lands. With the departure of the Terran Star Lords, Wurd conceived of another destiny for his daughter's son that would not result in kin war within the Holding. Wurd bestows upon Kincar a scale shirt, sword and surcoat of finest make, but he also directs the boy to leave the Holding before he takes his last breath. This story tells of the experiences of the refugees in a new version of Gorth.
Secret of the Lost Race:
a mysterious young man named Joktar, who is a dealer in a gambling
house in the Port of N'Yok. He looks much younger than he really is, and
the customers mistake him for an easy mark. Nothing could be further
from the truth. Joktar was orphaned early and forced to live on the
street. He is tough, intelligent, and wary, but Joktar is still swept up
in a night-time dragnet meant to find 'volunteers' for forced labor on
newly discovered worlds. Matters only go from bad to worse. Before he
can be shipped off-planet, Joktar is accused of murder by a man in the
gray uniform of the Intergalactic Scouts. His accuser attempts to beat
the truth out of him, then has him shipped out to the worst destination
in the galaxy: the planet, Fenris in the Constellation of the Wolf. Once
on the icy world of Fenris, Joktar is auctioned off to a mining
conglomerate but before he reaches his final destination in the alibite
mine, he escapes. Okay Norton fans, we're on a strange planet but in
otherwise familiar territory: a young outcast pitted against an alien
wilderness, hunted by mysterious, unsavory characters.Central Control series
Star Rangers (aka The Last Planet) In the waning days of a vast interstellar empire, a lone ship of the Patrol crash lands on a minor, very out of the way planet. Quickly scouting around their crash site, they find evidence of a long vanished high tech civilization in the Sealed Cities, along with nomadic hunter-gatherer level groups of humans. Looking for better shelter to tend their injured personnel, the rangers enter one of the cities, only to find it occupied by another group of refugees and ruled by the Acturian Cummi, a master telepath, one who is not above overpowering and directly controlling other peoples minds, who is bent on becoming the sole ruler of the planet. Zinga, a member of the ancient historian race of Zacathans (a reptilian race that populates many of Norton's science fiction works), and the human Kartr, both high order telepaths themselves, though not of the strength of Cummi, end up in a memorable mental battle with Cummi.
Star Guard: When Terrans learned to travel the space lanes, Central Control assigned them to a special role that suited their aggressive temperament and also provided a safety valve for all other belligerents among the great confederacy. The Terrans became the mercenaries of the Galaxy. Arch Hordes served on the relatively primitive worlds and Mech Legions served on the relatively advanced worlds. However, even the Mechs weapons were less advanced than those available to the Galactic Patrol. Kana Karr, newly graduated Arch Swordsman Third Class, comes to Prime to receive his first assignment. Waiting in the hiring hall, he hears rumors of lost legions and refused assignments. Then, a senior Combatant, accompanied by a Galactic Agent, announces that the troubles on Nevers have been fully investigated, with the assistance of Central Control, and certified that the defeat there was due to local problems and that the rumors concerning this episode are not to be repeated by any of the Corps. Karr is offered a position with Yorke's Horde and accepts the assignment.
Astra/Pax series
The Stars Are Ours: Mankind had reached the Moon, Mars and Venus, but found little to justify terraforming, so interplanetary flight was used only for scientific research. However, the three space stations provided a number of services. One of these stations was invaded by unidentified armed men who turned certain installations into weapons which they unleashed against the planet. A major portion of the planet was completely devastated and the loss of life was incalculable. Among the survivors was Arturo Renzi, who had lost his entire family. He began to preach the evils of science and was welcomed as a great leader throughout the world. However, his message was too liberal for some of his followers and he was assassinated. A dictatorship, the Company of Pax, rose up. In this novel, Dard Nordis, a son of the scientists who resisted the Pax, escaping invading Pax, leads refugees to a new home in the stars.
Crosstime Series
The Crossroads of Time (1956) is the first novel in the Crosstime series. Blake Walker is an entering art student at Havers who is staying in a hotel prior to registering at the school. In this novel, Blake has a premonition that something dangerous is about to occur in his vicinity and, when it peaks, he is drawn to the corridor. This story features psionic powers, but lacks many of the other characteristic plot elements of the author's later works. However, the author does include an ordinary kitten who plays a significant role in defeating the villain.
Quest Crosstime is the sequel to The Crossroads of Time and continues the adventures of Blake Walker, a citizen of our own circa-1950s Earth. A wildly scenic adventure through alternate Earths where Richard III won the Battle of Boswell and the Plantagenets continued to rule in England; Cortez was killed in his final battle with the Aztecs, and the Spanish never established an Empire in the New World. The action never falters as Blake in his disguise as a trader from New Britain continues his search for his missing twin.
Beast Master series
Lord of Thunder The sequel to Beast Master. Picking up several months after Storm and his team dealt with the alien presence on the planet Arzor, Storm's new home, this book starts out with a mysterious migration of the native Norbies. They are gathering in large numbers, ignoring old enmities with other tribes, and traveling to forbidden regions. Storm is engaged to search for a crashed human ship at the same time, in the forbidden regions. There were ruins of their presence on Arzor in the previous book, but nothing like that which is found in this one. Storm endures a great deal in his attempt to locate potential survivors of the crash, including facing angry Norbies and dealing with hostile creatures and machinery.
Beast Master's Ark: It is silent. It leaves no tracks. The only evidence that remains is the perfectly cleaned bones of its victims. And it has developed a taste for humans. No one has survived an attack yet, and the natives of Storm's adopted planet, Arzor, are moving in on human territory as they try to escape the silent scourge. The already high tensions between Humans and Natives soar, sparking a race against time as Storm attempts to solve the mystery of Death-which-comes-in-the-Night before Humans and Natives clash. But he can't do it without help from Tani, a genetic engineer from the Ark, a ship traveling space with genetic material from across the galaxy, including the destroyed Earth. But Tani has been poisoned against Beast Masters by her mother. She must conquer her own unreasoning hatred, and awaken the powerful Beast Master in herself, before she and Storm can conquer Death-which-Comes-in-the-Night and uncover the great conspiracy that threatens not only Arzor, but all human-occupied planets.
Beast Master's Circus: Laris is a young woman who works for a spacefaring circus, a bonded slave to its manager. An orphan with a troubled past, Laris is gifted with animals, a valuable asset to the circus and to her boss. But she's learned that somehow there's a connection between him and the Thieves Guild, and also the attempted abductions of Beast Masters' animals. She also knows that if her boss finds out what she has discovered, it would make her a problem, and he usually disposes of problems. When the circus lands on Arzor, home to Beast Masters Hosteen and Tani Storm, Laris feels a kinship to them and to Hosteen's family, the Quades. She realizes, however, that she may be endangering them by exposing them to the dark interest of her boss and his ill-intentioned friends. Hosteen and Tani like Laris, too, as does Logan Quade. She would give anything to tell them her dangerous secret, but cannot. Because she knows that her friendship with the Beast Masters could be their downfall, as well as her own!
Beast Master's Quest: When Laris inherits a spaceship from a distant relative, she realizes that she might now fulfill her dream of finding Prauo's home planet. But it won't be easy, and she is relieved when she is able to convince her new extended family to embark with her on a journey into the unknown depths of space. What Laris and her friends find in space, however, tests their beast master abilities and threatens their lives. Prauo's homeworld is beset by dangers the intrepid travelers could not have anticipated. It will take all of their talents and experience to get back to Arzor alive.
Solar Queen series
Plague Ship takes the crew of the 'Solar Queen' to Sargol, where the enigmatic feline natives seem very reluctant to trade away their fabulous scented gemstones. When Dane Thorson discovers an herb that the Salariki are willing to swap for their gems, he fears that his eagerness to make a trade breakthrough might have poisoned a native child. That becomes the least of his worries when the 'Solar Queen' blasts off from Sargol with invisible, undetectable stowaways that would brand the free traders anathema to all inhabited worlds. In space, the more senior members of the 'Solar Queen's' crew succumb to a strange plague that resembles sleeping sickness. Dane and his fellow-apprentices, with the assistance of Captain Jellico's Hoobat (a sort of blue parrot-lizard) discover the source of the plague: venomous hitch-hikers from Sargol. "It walked erect on two threads of legs...a bulging abdomen sheathed in the horny substance of a beetle's shell ended in a sharp point." It was only about a foot-and-a-half high and could change color like a chameleon. The Hoobat kills and eats the first creature, and then the hunt is on for others of its kind. Even with the source of the sleeping sickness discovered, the 'Solar Queen's' young apprentices must still convince the rest of the galaxy that they are not a plague ship--and therefore eligible to be destroyed on sight without warning.
Voodoo Planet features only Dane, Captain Jellico, and ship's medic, Tau out of the original crew. While the `Queen is being fitted up for her new job as an interstellar mail carrier, the three crew members are invited to Khatka, a planet settled by African refugees from Terra's ancient racial wars. Norton's fascination with magic is woven into this novel via a witch doctor gone over to the Dark Side. Lumbrilo is in league with poachers who are stripping the planet of its native animals. Captain Jellico, Medic Tau, and Dane team up with Khatka's Chief Ranger and his men to track down the off-world thieves and their powerful sorcerer, after their flitter crash-lands in a remote game preserve.
Postmarked the Stars: Trouble started early for the free-trader Solar Queen the moment cargo-master Dane Thorson collected a package for transit from Xecho to Trewsworld. What was in the package Dane did not learn until after he had been kidnapped, knocked out, and a dead man bearing his credentials had been substituted for him aboard the ship. Efforts to find out the reasons for the mysterious switch seemed hopeless until they made the ghastly discovery that their precious cargo of alien embyos had been subjected to secret radiation, causing them to regress genetically into monster forms. Only after Dane and his fellow spacemen had endured a series of nightmare adventures on their port of call did they begin to fit the puzzle together - to realize that they had stumbled upon a criminal operation that involved a whole cluster of stars.
Redline the Stars: now there's another new crew member: Rael Cofort, half-sister of one of the Queen's chief competitors. Attractive and competent, she just wanted passage to the new port of call, Canuche, in the Halios system. But what seems a simple run becomes a doubly dangerous mission as first a plague of rats and then an explosive crisis on the planetary star docks threaten to end the days of the Solar Queen and wipe out the population of Canuche's capital as well. It's do-or-die time for the Solar Queen...and her mysterious new crew member! (with P.M. Griffin)
Derelict for Trade: Stumbling upon an abandoned ship, Captain Jellico and the crew of the Solar Queen seize the prize and claim the right to salvage the derelict vessel, only to become the targets of a secret alien hijacking ring out to sabotage their claim. (with Sherwood Smith)
A Mind for Trade: On a perilous mission to mine an uncharted planet terrorized by land-shattering storms, the crew of the Solar Queen is threatened by the natives of the planet--a race of mysterious creatures who warn of a coming apocalypse." (with Sherwood Smith)
Time Traders series
The Time Traders: At the end of the Twentieth Century petty crook Ross Murdock is given the choice of facing a new medical procedure called Rehabilitation or volunteering to join a secret government project. Hoping for a chance to escape, Ross volunteers to join Operation Retrograde and is taken by Major John Kelgarries to a base built under the ice near the North Pole. Teamed with archaeologist Gordon Ashe, he is trained to mimic a trader of the Beaker culture of Bronze-Age Europe. Sent back to southern Britain around 2000 B.C.E., Ross and Ashe (as Rossa and Assha) find that their outpost has been bombed, destroyed by the wrath of Lurgha, the local storm god, according to two of the natives. Discovering the direction whence the bomber came and other clues pointing to the general area occupied by the Soviet base, Ross, Ashe, and McNeil, the lone survivor of the bombing, go to that area.
Galactic Derelict is the second solo time agent novel by Andre Norton, and the only one that features all of the main characters-- Gordon Ashe, Ross Murdock, and Travis Fox-- on stage together. The point-of-view character is a young Apache cowboy and archeologist named Travis Fox who stumbles onto a site manned by various time agents. After some communication over the radio, Fox is told: "Headquarters checked you out all along the line" and that he has been cleared. The Americans plan to outmaneuver the "Reds" by going back in time, locating an alien spaceship, boarding it, and transporting it into modern times. Everything goes more or less according to plan... up to a point. But when the agents board the ship, a timer preset by the Baldies goes off. The ship takes off with the agents inside, and they are literally lost in space and time.
The Defiant Agents Travis Fox and other modern day Apaches are
transported for colonization to Topaz. They are unwillingly subjected
to Redax, a procedure which occurs during stasis. They are mind-linked
with their ancient ancestors during transport, and upon arrival are
expected to use that knowledge to help survive the early colonization.
Upon arrival they crash and encounter modern day Russians, who have also
been exposed to their Mongol ancestors' ways. The Russian government is
able to control the Mongols' behavior remotely from a ship located on
the surface. The Apaches and Mongols must unite and work together to
free the colony from the Russian government. There is a nice blend of
themes here, with Fox using science and tradition to help him with the
problem of modern day oppression. Key Out of Time again features Ross Murdock as the hero. Accompanying a group of settlers to the now-empty water-planet Hawaika, he is sent back in time through a Time Gate . . . and must learn to survive ten thousand years in the past!
Firehand a young man finds himself as he teaches guerrilla warfare to a feudal, nonterrestrial offshoot of humanity in order to prepare them properly for a future in which space- and time-traveling humans are battling for survival against murderous aliens. Ross Murdock, a young criminal recruited as a Time Agent for his survival skills, is sent to the Dominion of Virgin, which had abruptly turned from a populous planet to a burned cinder as a result of time-travel by the Baldies, as the aliens are known. The key development that would have saved the planet was the evolution of mental powers that were delayed because of the turmoil following a warlord's conquests 700 years previously. Murdoch, scientist Gordon Ashe and arms expert Eveleen Riordan are sent back in time to Dominion to develop a resistance movement without revealing the existence of Earth or drawing the attention of the Baldies. (written with P.M. Griffin)
Echoes In Time Time agents Ross Murdock and Eveleen Riorden are recalled from their honeymoon to take part in a dangerous assignment: find a team of Russian scientists who have vanished without a trace from a research mission in the past of a far-off planet. Along with a team of Russian time Agents with their own mysterious agenda and Saba, a new agent teamed with Gordon Ashe, they leap into the alien world's distant history. There they encounter several alien races, whose appearance, language, and customs are almost incomprehensibly strange. Something changed this world, and music seems the only tool that might prove a key to unlocking the planet's secrets. But as they try to decipher a digital alien Rosetta stone, time is running out for their mission. Ross now knows what happened to the missing scientists--but can he save his team before they too vanish forever? (written with Sherwood Smith)
Atlantis Endgame Evidence of time travel has been found in ruins dating to the ancient world . . . in the legendary realm of Atlantis. So Murdock, Ashe, Eveleen Riordan, and other Time Patrollers deck themselves out as foreign traders to discover whether something is amiss in Atlantis. They find that the Baldies are there, as evidenced by sophisticated, high-tech equipment, whose purpose it is impossible to fathom. As they try to derail the Baldies' plot, the Time Patrollers realize that time is running out on their mission, when Atlantis is shaken by tremors that presage a cataclysm that may be the disaster that sank the fabulous island state. But they must be sure they act to preserve, not destroy, history--and if they're wrong, it'll be too late . . . for them and for Earth's future. (written with Sherwood Smith)
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