Witch World, by Andre Norton

Posted by: Redhead on: December 3, 2011

• In: Andre Norton
• 19 Comments

Witch World, by Andre Norton

Published in 1963

Where I got it: borrowed from a friend

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Andre Norton, the woman who has not one, but two literary genre awards named after her.  She broke glass ceilings left and right, has a near endless list of books to her name, and is rightfully so a legend in the science fiction community.  Her Witch World series started with a few stories, and grew exponentially to cover over 20 novels and novellas known as the Estcarp Cycle and the High Hallack Cycle.

What I’m getting at here is that if you style yourself a science fiction fan, read yourself some Norton. She may not use the flashiest guns or the shiniest spaceships, but these are the stories your favorite authors grew up reading. These are the stories that influenced many of the authors who are influencing you.

If there is such a thing as traditional sci-fantasy, Witch World is it.  Simon Tregarth, soldier turned bootlegger is running from the law. Approached by a gentleman who promises he can hide Simon forever, Simon doesn’t have much of a choice. Offered a doorway to the “world his heart desires”, Simon finds himself someplace. . . strange.  After saving a woman who is being hunted, Simon slowly learns about this new world. Escarp is a country ruled by women who have the Power (witches), and the surrounding countries are primarily male dominated cultures who wish to take over Estcarp.  Estcarp’s highly trained guardsmen (assisted by Simon) can take care of most of her enemies. But the soldiers of the Kolder, that’s a different story all together. Once they are on the march, no amount of guns or arrows will stop the creatures of Kolder.

Only women have the power of magic in this world, and once they age and start families, they lose their magic. They can also lose control of their power by telling someone their name.  How can a population continue if by continuing it loses it’s protection?  And what’s the point of power or protection when even that can’t stop the creatures of Kolder?  When it’s discovered that Simon has some of the power that until now has been reserved for women, perhaps he can find away to destroy Kolder, once and for all.  If only they could figure out exactly what his power can do. . .

One of Norton’s most famous series, and the book that brought untold quantities of young fans to the genre. In many cases, this is the book that people think of when they hear the name Andre Norton.   Just a few of the many reasons it kills me to say the story did absolutely nothing for me.

Maybe the story suffers from “first in a series” syndrome, where an author feels so much pressure to cram in a lot of background and world building (and boy is there a ton of that), that there just isn’t much room left for characterization.  We get to know Simon pretty well, and he’s actually a very interesting character, especially when he’s trying to rationalize the existence of magic and all the other strange things that occur in his new world.  There are two witches who become main characters, and I’d love to tell you about them but it would require sentences drowning in “she” and “her”, and we would both lose track of which “she” and “her” I was talking about.  That happened in the book a handful of times as well.  While there are some chunks of writing that are simply sublime, other areas were so difficult to parse that I simply had no idea which character was doing what to whom. I’d be lying if I said  it wasn’t a struggle for me to finish the book.

And after all that, will I continue reading in this series?  Actually, I think so.  You see, it was the very end that did it for me. Simon makes such a staggering discovery in the enemy stronghold (not what you think, trust me), that I’ve just got to see what happens.

but the bigger question is, should you read this? I say give it a try if you come across it, and if it doesn’t grab you don’t feel too awful about it. But definitely pick up another Norton title, because her science fiction is wonderful.

Tags: classic, magic, sci-fantasy, series, witches