Customer Reviews

The Book of Skaith Volume 2: The Hounds of Skaith (Planet Stories) (v. 2)

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(For additional information, please see my review of The Ginger Star.)

Having struck at the heart of power on Skaith, Stark spreads revolt, collecting an alien menagerie of allies along the way. This volume is dominated by the great battles, and is more action-packed that the first volume, building to a victorious crescendo. The characters continue to emerge, and more contemporary commentary becomes evident (Farers/Hippies; the worship of charismatic leaders), as does Brackett's later influence on the Star Wars universe. This has turned into a must-read series for me...in other words, you must read it!

Click on the customer images, as Amazon has kept the placeholder art for the cover, instead of the eye-popping final art.

The Hounds of Skaith is the second book in the Skaith trilogy, following on immediately from the ending of The Ginger Star (which you should definately read first). Stark has overthrown the citadel of the Wandsmen, rescued his foster-father, and mastered a fearsome pack of hounds that can paralyse you with their mind (to enable them to eat you: that seems a fairly gruesome way to go if you think about it). Now Stark must escape the cold north of this dying world and get back to the sole starport so he can get off-planet.

It will not, of course, be that easy. There are twists and turns in the paths, treachery and traitors, and how long Stark's hounds will follow him - remain tamed - is always questionable. While the Wandsmen may have lost their citadel, their power is not broken, and they hate Stark and wish to stop him leaving Skaith.

After meeting the Skaith-children of water and earth in The Ginger Star, we now meet the children of air - genetically manipulated failures, who cannot truly fly, and yet who long to soar. They are both fearsome and pitable, flawed and deadly.

All of this is told with Brackett's characteristic voice: cinematic description and note-prefect dialogue, with a world-weary hero at the centre of it all. Somehow, sword and planet got lost amidst the fantasy resurgence of the 1980's, and the Book of Skaith was one of the saddest losses of all...until now.

In Skaith, Leigh Brackett created one of the most memorable fictional worlds in science-fiction history. With The Ginger Star, the first book in the series, she introduced a world stymied in its technological advancement by the cooling of its sun where Eric John Stark, previously an adventurer on Mars and Venus, goes to find his foster father, Simon Ashton. Here, Brackett continues Stark's adventures as he fights the communistic Lords Protectors, whose desire for power has led them to condemn all the people on Skaith to death as the planet's star slowly loses its ability to provide the warmth and light necessary for life. The milieu is similar to the Dying Earth of William Hope Hodgson, Clark Ashton Smith, Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, and others, despite the difference in the planet serving as its setting. As befits such a tale, the narrative is terse and bleak. Surprisingly the characters are well developed and strongly fleshed out, making us sympathize with them in the harshness they face while defying Fate. Even the titular Hounds come across as believable and sympathetic. At the same time, Skaith itself is a character in the stories, serving variously as antagonist and benefactor while Stark and his allies battle to save the remnants of a once-great civilization from becoming extinct. Of course the tale of Skaith is too broad for two novels to be able to chronicle it all, and this leaves us breathlessly awaiting Leigh Brackett's final vision of her guttering world.