Customer Reviews

Postmarked the Stars (Solar Queen, Bk. 4)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the fourth book in the Solar Queen series, which takes place in Andre Norton's Forerunner universe. (Click on my name to see the list.) The Solar Queen is a small spaceship that makes cargo runs among planets far from Earth. Many of them have not been well explored, some have been colonized, some are home to aliens, and many have the ruins of highly advanced alien civilizations that have vanished.

In "Postmarked the Stars," the Solar Queen has been assigned to make postal deliveries between two planets. All the familiar crew from previous books are here, but Dane almost gets left behind when the Queen lifts off, because he has been poisoned and replaced by a look-alike who promptly turns up dead. Someone has sabotaged the Queen's cargo, and the trouble continues to escalate after the ship sets down again. With no way to explain the dead body and damaged cargo, the crew tries to avoid the law and solve a mystery that ultimately has them running from gigantic alien creatures and homicidal criminals.

If you liked previous books in this series, you'll also enjoy this one. I rate it four stars because it isn't quite as good as the first two, but hey, it's a Solar Queen adventure! It was great to read another story about the old gang, all of them acting right in character, getting into their usual predicaments and handling it with their usual camaraderie.

This is the entire Solar Queen series:
1. Sargasso of Space (1955)
2. Plague Ship (1956)
3. Voodoo Planet (1959)
4. Postmarked the Stars (1969)
5. Redline the Stars, with PM Griffin (1993)
6. Derelict for Trade, with Sherwood Smith (1997)
7. A Mind for Trade, with Sherwood Smith (1997)

"Sargasso of Space" and "Plague Ship" have been reprinted recently in a single volume called The Solar Queen

The Solar Queen, a merchant ship, arrives for a delivery. The crew discovers a mysterious stow-away who has died during the trip, and who apparently hid a package on board. The stow-away and package are later linked to the politics of the destination planet, which contains strange mutated creatures. Animal telepathy plays a role in the story, as in other Norton novels. This is an easy, fast read and entertaining as an adventure.

I spent an entertaining hour or so re-reading this oldie - probably first read it in the 70's. It has all the standard equipment for vintage SF - the weapons are blasters, stunners, or tanglers, the craft are flitters, crawlers, or spacers. Unspecified "radiation" causes all sorts of weird effects. There's a rough planet which is just being colonized, therefore able to hold some surprises for the settlers and for the hard-working crew of a small space freighter.

For the genre, it's well done...but it really wouldn't be too hard to rewrite this as the story of the crew of a small tramp steamer reaching an outpost on some wild and unexplored coast, in about 1900 or so: their adventures would be spiced by a touch of "The Lost World", with prehistoric monsters being bred for purposes of dominance by an evil international group acting under cover of research. The only thing that's really unique, to mark this as SF, is the charming invention of the "brachs" - cuddly animals that (due to "radiation" again) acquire unusual intelligence and language, translated to human speech by a translator gadget. Wonder if Andre Norton, who died on 2005, saw any cellphones with their built-in language phrase-books? (Though they are not as capable as her "translator.")

Following review links from this I came across "Dread Companion" which sounds to have more punch...will get it, I think.

This is a good read book 4 in the Solar Queen series. Book 1 is Sargosso of Space. Book 2 is Plague Ship. Book 3 is Vodoo Planet. If you like the series you will find it along those lines.