book log: Andre Norton: Plague ship and Voodoo Planet

[julesjones]

Discovered a while back that there are several of Norton's books on Project Gutenberg, and promptly downloaded them via the Feedbooks site into my Cybook. Over the last couple of weeks I've read Plague Ship and Voodoo Planet, the second and third titles from the Solar Queen series.

The first two Solar Queen books were major comfort reads for me when I was a kid, so I was a little bit worried about whether Plague Ship would stand up to scrutiny [mumble] years on. But it's still enormous fun. Voodoo Planet is novella length, and one I'd only read once or twice before. Good read, although I think wouldn't have hooked me the way the first two did if I hadn't already known the characters.

I want to talk about Plague Ship in more depth, but that needs to wait until I'm a bit less tired. Maybe this weekend, but it'll be competing for time with doing some writing of my own.

Started Ralestone Luck, her first written and second published novel, once I'd finished Voodoo Planet yesterday. Completely unfamiliar to me, and the prose is not up to the standard of her later books, but it's definitely Norton's style and I'm enjoying it.

Comments

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

it's definitely Norton's style

Person in my lap wonders if this means there are cats?

[julesjones]

So far there's one cat.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

She's just warming up, then!

[shana.livejournal.com]

Plague Ship was one of my favorites. And one of the first sf paperbacks I bought -- I think my Ace edition cost sixty cents. Back in 1969, I think.

[julesjones]

I read the library's copies -- I was fortunate enough to live in two different places with *large* collections of Norton in hardback. I did eventually buy at least one of the Solar Queen books in paperback as an adult, when I finally saw one in a bookshop, but it or they have been in storage since I moved to California, and I haven't had a chance to get those boxes out of family attics since moving back.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Didsbury Library had loads of Nortons in the 1970s. Not sure I ever owned any.

[cat63.livejournal.com]

Oooh, thank you! - I've been trying to get hold of a copy of Voodoo Planet for ages and I hadn't realised it was available on Gutenberg!

[julesjones]

It's always worth checking Gutenberg for American sf of that era, because a lot of it fell out of copyright during the period when copyright was fixed term and expired after the first term unless you explicitly renewed. They've currently got a dozen of Norton's titles.