Warlock of the Witch World (Estcarp, book 4) by Andre Norton

[james_davis_nicoll]

Warlock of the Witch World (Estcarp, book 4) by Andre Norton

Comments

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

"1: Witch World is very old. Various mages, witches, gods, and other eldritch beings have been casually discarding magic items throughout its history. Magic Items of Great Power seem to be to the Witch World what plastic and garbage are to the North Pacific Gyre."

Given the eternal nature of many mythical artifacts and entities, I'd imagine any magical setting which lasts long enough eventually become something of a mystical superfund site. Weren't the multitudinous hells of Shea's "Nifft the Lean" setting the result of ages of spiritual contamination from the human world leaking downwards?

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

This is an excellent point.

I included an 'inconvenient magical items' archive for one of my RPG worlds for similar problems. Artifacts don't need to be cursed; amusement for others can be had merely from powerful magical items without an operator's manual.

[chrysostom476.livejournal.com]

Unless magic is a finite resource, like in Niven's "The Magic Goes Away" stories.

[lostwanderfound.livejournal.com]

The cover art appears to be a person in a home-made Halloween costume who couldn't decide if he wanted to be Batman or a ninja.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

Never having read the Witch World novels, and having looked up what it means in that universe, I am nonetheless of the opinion the story would have been improved if the Witch World's krogan were also turtle-humanoid blood knights with a fondness for heavy weaponry and explody mayhem.

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

Wow, lotsa people remembered this as their favorite of the five "mainline" WW novels and no comments. No comments on much of lj the last few days. Clearly I am missing something.

Re: your wondering about Kemoc--clearly you were not alone in wondering this; see: the non-bespelled Kyllan as well as Kathea, and the constant warnings to him from those who were at least keeping an open mind that everyone would wonder this (tho not necessarily ascribing the same subconscious motive I think you were attributing?)

While this got the nod in my memory as a slight favorite of these books, I just reread this one shortly before your review went up (finished the five Simon/Jaelithe/Their Kids WW novels earlier on ... Weds?)and I was also disappointed by the ending, and had similar thoughts on "dayumn, why it have to be the girl who got suckered by a bad guy?"

Tho I suppose it's an open question of whether she was easier to bewitch like this because her Witch training in Estcarp (or maybe she was just that way) made her a bit more self-centered than her brothers.Plus Dinzil was a presumably hetero male, apparently very good looking with a lot of charisma and much admired by all, Kathea was single and probably kinda cute and very powerful herself but not sufficiently trained to guard against whatever mojo he had going, so why wouldn't they gravitate toward each other (for at least partly but maybe not entirely different reasons)?

Orsya was a terrific character, probably the most admirable of the bunch, Loskeetha and her garden were very memorable ("that sword you are so ready to use on your sister", and Dahaun was pretty awesome.

Immediately thought of your reviews while reading and was waiting for you to mention the sword and the unicorn horn and fortuitous encounters. Still wondering what the merfray were and why most people (all humans? everyone but the krogan?) couldn't see them. Awesome touch, that.

One thing I particularly remembered about both Kyllan and Kemoc's books were that they were explosions of color throughout. This memory proved true. Very vivid imagery. Even the merfray had memorable ripples.

[mrteufel.livejournal.com]

Re: Phoenix Saga; What is a reasonable punishment for negligent genocide?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Something that only happened because Claremont wrote it in.

What happened to Galactus?

[mrteufel.livejournal.com]

I never really followed Fantastic Four, so I don't know the ways Galactus has been dealt with. Is he an obligate planet-eater?

[w. dow rieder (from livejournal.com)]

In the 80s, I spent far more time and attention on the issue than was probably healthy. According to a joint interview, in Claremont's script, Dark Phoenix destroyed a star. It was John Byrne who added the "and five billion asparagus people die with one scream" bit in the rough art. Claremont was okay with it, so there is that.

I held a deep grudge against Jim Shooter for decades, because I really liked the original Phoenix, and if he was going to intervene editorially in a storyline, the only appropriate place to do so was the beginning. I did not understand at the time that his problem, and the reason he was tolerated, was sexism.

It wasn't until much later, after I became disenchanted with Claremont's writing for other reasons, that I saw the problems with the original Claremont/Byrne story. It was easy to look enlightened compared to Shooter.

Edit: And Phoenix dying was a compromise--what Shooter originally wanted was for her to be *tortured*.