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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Assortment of 5 good short stories.,
By Michele L. Worley (Kingdom of the Mouse, United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: High Sorcery (Paperback)
The 5 stories in this volume are discussed below in order of original publication, rather than the order in which they appear in the book. Only one is a Witch World story, but due to the perversity of life in general, it so far appears *only* in this book."By a Hair" (1958) - Also appears in _Wizards' Worlds_. This story takes place in a tiny, nameless valley somewhere between Germany and Russia. During World War II, the old Count was shot and his wife was sent to a concentration camp - and Ivor and his men took to the hills to fight. After the war, Ivor married a woman in the mold of la belle dame sans merci - beautiful, ambitious, and cold-hearted; she married him because in the immediate wake of World War II, he was a hero, with the highest status in the valley. The countess came home - her body so twisted and broken from the Nazis' tortures that few remembered that she was still a young woman. It seemed that life would go on...then the last, crushing blow fell. The Russians came, and this time, the little valley was left to fight alone, without the world's help. The Russians killed any authority figures they could catch that the Nazis hadn't killed already - except Ivor, who took what fighting men were left and headed into the hills again, and the Countess, who also faded into hiding. Among those killed was the priest - and in their despair, the valley folk began to seek help from other sources. "Wizard's World" (1967) - After Earth's devastating atomic wars, mutations began cropping up - notably the Espers. Once respected, then warily tolerated for their wild talents, all Espers are now either trapped in labor camps, hunted fugitives, or - worst of all - traitors, serving as trackers to hunt down fugitives. Craike, an Esper now hoping only for a quick death before he can be forced to betray his allies to the hunters only minutes behind him, climbs to the top of a rocky gorge in the desert, flings himself from the brink - and falls into a foaming river where no river could be! His desperation and Esper talent have somehow unlocked a gate between realities, into another world. This is *not* a Witch World story; to the best of my knowledge, the world Craike finds himself in has not reappeared in any other Norton story to date. Magic does exist in the Wizard's World in which he finds himself, but magic dominated by men, and only those belonging to the order that rules the country - not that they're the *only* practitioners of magic, but only they have official sanction. Craike finds a brother and sister who have been condemned for the crime of having magic that doesn't fit the approved mold - and steps in to try to rescue them. Craike has gone from one Esper's war to another - but this time he has a chance to win. The story doesn't wrap up with Craike's total victory, nothing so trite. We just have a man who has the makings of a warlord, carving out for himself a promising beginning. "Toys of Tamisan" (1969) - See my review of Norton's book _Perilous Dreams_ for my review of this story and its sequel, "Ship of Mist", the latter of which appears *only* in _Perilous Dreams_ to date. "Through the Needle's Eye" (1970) - Also appears in _Moon Mirror_. The narrator, looking back, on her childhood as a little girl crippled by polio, begins with the day she refused to go to a birthday party, since she couldn't join in the games. Exploring the back garden to kill time, she crosses over into the neighboring property - to find a beautiful quilt on a clothesline, a work of art. And then a voice behind her asks her opinion of it... Thus she meets Anne Ruthevan - an artist in needlework whose life and body were both smashed by the carriage accident that killed her father when she was twenty. The now-elderly Miss Ruthevan takes the girl on as a student in the art of needlework. For hundreds of years, Ruthevan women have had the gift - witness the centuries-old tapestries in Miss Ruthevan's home. But what price have they had to pay for the greatest triumphs of their art? "Ully the Piper" (1970) - Currently appears only in this collection. It's a variation on a Mexican fairy tale, "Domingo Siete", a version of which appeared in English translation in the Collier's Junior Classic series I had as a kid (called "Tonino and the Fairies", I think). In the years after the Invader's War, the small village of Coombfrome, which was always isolated at the best of times, seems to have been completely forgotten. Even their overlord, whoever he may be now, fails to collect taxes. When a trader passes through, it's an event. One such trader leaves a pipe behind, to be broken in the hands of the arrogant braggart who dominates the youngsters of the village. But Ully, crippled and confined to a cart, has a talent for mending broken things, and teaches himself to play the now patched-up pipe. Out of spite, the strutting bully who first broke the pipe one day sends Ully's cart out of control down a steep hill, to fetch up at the standing stones near the village. Where Ully finds that someone else might be interested in his music...
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Short story collection by a great sorceress of fantasy,
By E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: High Sorcery (Mass Market Paperback)
"High Sorcery" (1970) is a collection of four short stories and a novelette by Lifetime Grand Master of Fantasy, Andre Norton (Alice Mary North), who passed away on March 17, 2005 after a long and extremely fruitful career. Her first novel was published in 1934, her last in 2005. Her unusual, detailed world-building skills will be sorely missed.
One of the stories in "High Sorcery," "Ully the Piper" takes place in the Dales of High Hallack, one of Norton's famous Witch World settings. Her Witch World will be remembered with the same sense of mystery and delight as Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea and Tolkein's Middle Earth, if history is fair to this prolific author. Ully of Coomb Brackett in the Dales was crippled falling out of a tree as a boy (many of Norton's major characters are physically handicapped). He is asked to pipe for a dance on Midsummer's Eve, but a bully steals his musical instrument and drives him away. Ully is then given the opportunity to offer up his music to another, much stranger group of dancers. Three of this collection's stories are complete stand-alones as far as setting, although "Wizard's World" comes very close to being a Witch World novelette. The hero, Craike tries to commit suicide when he is hunted down on our future Earth because of his Esper talents. He leaps from a cliff--and instead of dying, finds himself transported to an alternate world where unusual mental abilities are a bit more commonplace. Still there are the hunters and the hunted, and Craike automatically sides with a shape-changed sorceress when she is being driven to her death by the notorious Black Hoods. "Through the Needle's Eye" matches a lonely teenager who has been lamed by polio with old Miss Ruthevan, who was crippled in a driving accident in her long-ago youth. Miss Ruthevan possesses wondrous skills with her embroidery needle. Her finished works look disturbingly real. She offers to teach young Ernestine how to embroider, but warns her that such gifts come with a price. Ernestine must decide whether she is willing to pay that price. "By a Hair" is the least successful story in this collection. It takes place in an unnamed Baltic country during and after World War II, when the Nazi invaders are replaced by Russian troops. Countess Ana returns from a Nazi concentration camp, her body deformed and her youth fled, to discover that "where the Nazi had strutted in his pride, the Bear of the north shambled, and stamped into red dust those who defied him." When the beautiful Dagmar betrays her partisan lover to the Russian Colonel, Countess Ana and the midwife, Mald quietly seek revenge. The novelette, "Toys of Tamisan" also appears in Norton's "Perilous Dreams" (1976). It takes place in a future where humanity had long ago reached the stars and scattered itself across thousands of planets. The heroine, Tamisan is a 'true action dreamer to the tenth power' and she can share her dreams (for a certain fee) with others. Lord Starrex is a former space voyager who now lies crippled in the midst of luxury. He can afford the very best Tamisan has to offer and she wants to create a unique fantasy world for him because she senses that he has been everywhere, seen everything, and will not be satisfied with her usual fare. She hits upon the idea of creating an alternate history of their world, where certain key events can be altered by Tamisan to yield a different present. Unfortunately, once Tamisan and Lord Starrex are plunged into her dream of an alternate history, Tamisan discovers she has lost her ability to manipulate events in her fantasy world. Furthermore, she seems to have misplaced her client. Magic is alive and well in Tamisan's alternate history, and she herself is one of its practitioners! "Perilous Dreams" continues the adventures of Tamisan and Lord Starrex in "Ship of Mist." It is easy to get caught up in Norton's stories. She conjures her reader right into the midst of the hunt, the mayhem, and the magic. She was indeed a high sorceress of fantasy.
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