Short and Sweet Book Reviews # 279 - Into the Black by Evan Currie, Witch World by Andre Norton

Into the Black by Evan Currie

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is classic space opera/ military science fiction. The Odyssey is on its first space journey and is the first ship of its kind. On it’s maiden voyage it picks up what sounds like a distress signal and goes to answer. The rest you can guess. Even though it is a common theme there is something for almost everyone in the story. There is a lot of technical explanation for the tech fan. There is a lot of action for the action fan. There are new worlds for the pure science fiction fan.

While the plot is predictable the action is interesting. The world building is good but the character development is a little thin. It could be because there are so many characters and most play a major role in the action. As a result more time is spent on the action each is involved in than on developing a well-rounded character.

When the action came to an end there was not final solution to the problem. In fact the last page of the book pointed to a much bigger problem facing everyone. I do want to find out what will happen next so I will be looking for the next book. I listened to this as an audio book and while the voice for the male characters was spot on the voice for the female left something to be desired.


Witch World by Andre Norton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I loved the first part of the book where Simon Tregarth escaped Earth and came to a new world. The writing there lead the way to future fantasy and scifi books. After that I hit parts that moved to slow then parts that kept up a very fast pace. This is the book for my Science Fiction Book Club this month. We are reading some of the Grand Masters of Science Fiction and Andre Norton was one of the early authors chosen. I read the book years ago and it was interesting remembering how I reacted to the story then and how I reacted to it now. Then I was looking only at the story and today I was looking at how the bones of the story as impacted writing today. Norton was a trail blazer and Witch World was part of that trail.

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