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Storm Over Warlock

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The Throg task force struck the Terran Survey camp a few minutes after dawn, without warning, and with a deadly precision

The planet Warlock in the Circe System was being surveyed for possible human colonization when the alien attack wiped out Terran Survey team---all except for Shann Lantee, its youngest and least important member.

Shann now realizes that he is the only one of his kind left alive, on a none-too-hospitable world controlled by enemies---without shelter or supplies. He does have two companion wolverines---genetically altered and highly intelligent scouts---

Okay Norton fans, were on a strange planet but in otherwise familiar territory: a young, low-caste human companioned with intelligent, mutant animals, manages to survive with their freely-offered assistance. Because of his new-found ability to communicate with his wolverines, he also establishes first contact with Warlocks mysterious, semi-aquatic Wyverns.

Storm over Warlock is one of Nortons finest SF adventure novels, equally as exotic and exciting as her Plague Ship or Lord of Thunder. Her hero Shann not only needs to overcome the prejudice of his own kind and survive on a strange new world, he must also learn how to earn the trust of his companions, the wolverines Taggi and Togi.

Nortons non-human characters, whether they be wolverines or Wyverns are fully-realized, sentient beings. They are not pushovers for pathetic, starving humans, no matter how plucky and likeable. Shann has to earn his own way with them.

We, her readers must also earn our way. We must never expect to fully understand how a wolverine or Wyvern thinks. We must learn to accept them as our equals, no matter what their shape or thought-processes.

Andre Norton keeps us turning the pages, not only for the cliff-hangers that Shann gets himself into, but also for the tantalizing glimpses into the minds of her non-human characters.

Storm Over Warlock is the first novel in the Warlock series. Warlock is the second planet in the Circe system. First scouted four years previously, a Terran Survey Corps team has been sent to prepare the planet for the coming of the first pioneers.

In this novel, Shann Lantee has joined the Survey team as contract labor from the Dumps of Tyr, performing the dirty, tedious clean-up jobs and the dull maintenance routines. Yet one of these jobs is the care and feeding of the mutant wolverines, which soon becomes an act of friendship rather than a chore. While the wolverines return this friendship, they are mischievous and cunning, enjoying an occasional outing without formal permission. During one such escape, Shann and the wolverines witness the Tharg attack that overruns the camp. As the only known survivors, Shann immediately increases the distance between themselves and the camp.

As they travel, Shann comes across a downed Terran scoutship being harried by Tharg flyers, but the Tharg weapons set off an explosion that destroys one of the Tharg vessels and drives the other Tharg flyer from the scene. Shann investigates the crashed flyer and is fired on and pinned down by a survivor, but then a rock smashes the Tharg's head from above, thrown by Ragnar Thorvald, leader of the Survey team. Thorvald has been off-world on Survey business and was returning for the arrival of the settler ship, but their hail of the camp was not answered except by the Tharg flyers. The scoutship had been damaged during the fight and the pilot killed, so Thorvald sets an explosive surprise for the Tharg and abandons ship.

When Thorvald recognizes Shann, he immediately asks about the camp and receives little good news. However, he realizes that the Tharg have probably left many Survey items within the camp, since they are no use to the aliens, and then conceives a plan to raid the camp disguised as natives, thereby concealing the presence of Terran survivors. Thorvald and Shann prepare primitive tools and weapons for the attack to add authenticity to the subterfuge. They use bolos, fireballs, stink bombs and spears to kill a few Thargs and create a diversion while Thorvald gathers items from the camp, then they escape on a raft.

Thorvald has noted a "hound" within the camp and suspects trouble. Later, they discover that the alien animal is following their trail and that they can neither evade it nor even kill it with any weapon at their disposal.

In the journey downriver, Thorvald finally admits to Shann why they are heading toward the sea. Thorvald possesses a curious bone-like medallion with hypnotic carvings that has been found on a sea island beach. The object was very unlikely to be Tharg work, so possibly Warlock holds, or once held, a native race living somewhere near the sea. When Thorvald allows a few drops of water to fall on the object in his hand, he looks dazed and acts like he is mind-controlled.

As they float downriver, both Thorvald and Shann have weird dreams about skull mounts and veiled caverns. The first-in scout also had such dreams, which sometimes coincided with an "emanation" registering on certain instruments. They speculate that the river water may have conducted the dreams to them from the sea.

When they reach the sea, the dreams are even stronger. Thorvald is now obsessed with finding the things or persons who are projecting the dream. Then Thorvald apparently succumbs to the lure of these dreams, paddling their canoe away while Shann is asleep on the beach. Shann tries to build another craft, but destroys it later as he sleeps. The dreamers seemly want to remain unfound.

This novel has the signature characteristics of early Norton stories: a courageous young person coping with adversity on his own, with aliens and animals as well as telepathy and other psionic powers. It also displays another signature personality trait: perseverance to the point of obstinacy.

Storm Over Warlock is recommended for all Andre Norton fans and anyone who likes stories about young people, friendly animals, and even somewhat friendly aliens, successfully coping with a hostile environment and even more hostile sentients.

-Arthur W. Jordin

In this book and it's sequel, Ordeal in Otherwhere, Andre Norton continued to develop the far future history that would sustain many of her books though the next decade.

Shan Lantee is very much a Norton young adult hero. Reared in the Dumps of Tyr, he fought his way into a laboring position as a caretaker for a pair mutant wolverines used by Survey in exploring the planet of Warlock. This precarious toe-hold on respectability was threatened by the malice of Garth Thorvald, a young cadet. However, Garth's malicious action in releasing the wolverines led to Lantee being absent from the camp hunting them when the insect like Throgs (aliens with whom the Terrans cannot find common meeting ground and so they fight a war of running skirmishes) attacked and destroyed it.

Heading away from the camp, Lantee chances upon a downed space ship and meets up with Garth's older brother, who had been off world an effort to slow down colonization of Warlock.

The two begin a fantastic adventure as they cross the vividly described countryside, pulled by a compulsion that cannot be explained, while dodging Throgs and natural threats.

This books definitely bears reading and rereading. I may like it even more now, than it did nearly forty years ago.

Norton is one of the most prolific authors ever within the fields of science fiction and fantasy. Most of her works are very workmanlike enjoyable reads, but are often quite formulaic, with little to distinguish one work from the next. Not so with this work, written when she was at the height of her powers as a science fiction writer before turning mainly to fantasy.

Shann Lantee is left stranded on the alien world of Warlock after the Survey camp of which he was the lowest member is wiped out in an attack by the Throgs, beetle like beings so alien no one has figured out how to have any intelligent discourse with. From this fairly stock beginning this book quickly progresses from learning how to survive under harsh conditions while being chased by the Throgs to an investigation of the power of dreams and the value of being able to distinguish between real and unreal when Shann meets the Wyverns.

The Wyverns, the semi-aquatic native race, are masters of the illusion, the dream made real, delvers into the pre-ordained while maintaining the right of individuals to choose their actions. Some of the images Norton paints in describing these people and the tests they impose on Shann have remarkable staying power, haunting and fittingly alien. Norton's thematic points here on the role of fate, individual drive and determination, and the possibility of there being truly intelligent beings that we will never be able to communicate with are all well drawn, never starkly thrown at the reader, but developed naturally from the events of the story. It is these images combined with her strong thematic points that elevate this book well beyond the standard young-man adventure story, though it is also a very good example of that type of page-turning story.

Norton's prose is pretty utilitarian, not scaling the walls of the unforgettable line, but at the same time managing to paint a very coherent picture of her scenes, characters, and concepts. This makes this book both readable and understandable to a wide range of audience ages, from early teen to adult. At the same time, the 'science' here is pretty soft, mainly techno-babble words and concepts that allow her to set the environment for her story, which she acknowledges at one point by referring the Wyvern technology as 'effectively magic'. This is not really a detriment, as the science is definitely secondary to her story of different kinds of people, human or not.

A fine adventure, a compelling look at fate and dreams, an outstanding vision of intelligence in many different forms.

Andre Norton and I go back a long, long way! Like many of the folks in my age group (old as dirt), my first experience and first exposure to the SiFi genre was via a Norton book...specifically in my case it was `Star Man's Son.' I must have read that ragged copy a dozen times. Of course having loved that book it was natural for me to seek out other books by this author and among those reads was the book being reviewed here, `Storm Over Warlock.' It would be difficult to estimate or gage the influence that Norton had over me over the next several decades, but suffice to say...I owe her a lot.

Briefly stated, this is a futuristic story of a young man, of low and depressed background that through a series of circumstances is hired on by an exploration group; a team that is sent to various planets to establish base camps on worlds fit for colonization in preparation for the soon to follow immigrants. Our hero, Shann Lantee has one of the lowest, if not the lowest, job of the entire team, that of common laborer and cage cleaner. Of course the human race in its attempts to colonize new world has an enemy...The Throgs, an insect like creature with a thought process so alien that communications between Throg and Human are nonexistent.

Shann's entire camp is whipped out by their foes in a dastardly strike and the only survivor is Shann himself and two genetically enhanced wolverines who Shann has found he shares a mental link with. They are eventually joined my another member of the survey crew to survive and these four, two humans and two wolverines must not only learn the ways of a new planet, but also evade capture by the Throgs, deal with alien life forms and try to save the soon to arrive group of colonists.

While this is an earlier Norton work it is still and all pure Norton. Her ability to link human with animal and/or alien life forms has not been fully developed in this particular story but it is certainly well on its way. The basic premise of the story will appear time and time again in her future works; each becoming better, more sophisticated and more developed.

This of course was meant to be a YA book at the time. I still read a lot of YA literature and like a couple of other reviewers here, have noted the fact that Norton, along with a number of other YA writers of this era, simply created a better product that some of the current offerings we see on the shelves today. Now don't get me wrong, I feel that some of the YA literature of today is great and in fact, overall, is superior to much of the adult works being offered. I really feel that character development and attention to detail were, in general, superior at that time. Hey, maybe I am just getting old and am evaluating this stuff through the eyes of an old many...???

Anyway, this was a great read then and it is a great read now. Adults will find this just as rewarding as the younger set and adults who read this work in their youth can take a wonderful trip down memory lane.

This is a review from the Kindle edition. The formating here is good and quite readable.

Don Blankenship

The Ozarks

I first read this book during the late 60's after reading ORDEAL IN OTHERWHERE. Those 2 books were my first foray into the world of sci-fi. I read them and re-read them over the course of high school, and loved them every time. Andre Norton became one of my favorite authors during those years.

What a joy to find it in a Kindle version. Feeling nostalgic, I downloaded and re-read it this past week. It was like a reunion with old friends.

I was struck by one thing...the YA fiction I've read recently does not have the depth these characters have. And it does not have the richness of imagery the way this book does. It used to be found in the YA section of the Library, but I think all ages would enjoy it. While some of the things in the book are a little dated...like learning from a video...the basic story is timeless.

Enjoy!

"The Throg task force struck the Terran Survey camp a few minutes after dawn, without warning, and with a deadly precision..."

The planet Warlock in the Circe System was being surveyed for possible human colonization when the alien attack wiped out Terran Survey team---all except for Shann Lantee, its youngest and least important member.

Shann now realizes that he is the only one of his kind left alive, "on a none-too-hospitable world controlled by enemies---without shelter or supplies." He does have two companion wolverines---genetically altered and highly intelligent scouts---

Okay Norton fans, we're on a strange planet but in otherwise familiar territory: a young, low-caste human companioned with intelligent, mutant animals, manages to survive with their freely-offered assistance. Because of his new-found ability to communicate with his wolverines, he also establishes first contact with Warlock's mysterious, semi-aquatic Wyverns.

"Storm over Warlock" is one of Norton's finest SF adventure novels, equally as exotic and exciting as her "Plague Ship" or "Lord of Thunder." Her hero Shann not only needs to overcome the prejudice of his own kind and survive on a strange new world, he must also learn how to earn the trust of his companions, the wolverines Taggi and Togi.

Norton's non-human characters, whether they be wolverines or Wyverns are fully-realized, sentient beings. They are not pushovers for pathetic, starving humans, no matter how plucky and likeable. Shann has to earn his own way with them.

We, her readers must also earn our way. We must never expect to fully understand how a wolverine or Wyvern thinks. We must learn to accept them as our equals, no matter what their shape or thought-processes.

Andre Norton keeps us turning the pages, not only for the cliff-hangers that Shann gets himself into, but also for the tantalizing glimpses into the minds of her non-human characters.

Storm over Warlock is another boy and his animals story. The protagonist is an animal handler, and the genetically altered wolverines are his responsibility. One of his enemies lets them out to try and get him in trouble, so he has to go and find 'em.

This gives him the Luke Skywalker role, while said enemy and the rest of the people suffer the Owen and Beru fate.

He is soon hunted himself, leading him to strange adventures, conflict, and even stranger aliens, the Wyvern, with their magical illusionist abilities.