Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Norton was a prolific speculative fiction author whose career spanned eight decades, one of the few high profile women working in the field of science fiction and from the award's inception to 2003, the sole female recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. Contrary to the usual pattern for her era, she focused more on novels than on short stories; despite that, she did have a substantial body of short works. With an introduction by Jody Lynn Nye, this volume collects 18 pieces, drawn from across her career, fantasy and science fiction. Her famous Witch World is featured but is not the sole setting. In these stories, witches are paid with calumny for serving the greater good, toy makers contend against evil usurpers, boys outwit greedy trolls and space travelers risk death deep within long lost ships. Norton's prose is straightforward and clear; her stories might appear to be simple at first glance but on closer examination often reveal greater depths, an embrace of themes other speculative fiction authors eschewed. A promising beginning to its series, this work demonstrates why Norton, like C.L. Moore and Leigh Brackett, must be counted as one of the significant authors of speculative fiction. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Library Journal Review
In the first of a projected set of three story collections, readers get a sampling of the wonderful imagination of one of sf and fantasy's best-loved authors, who died in 2005. High Hallack was both a setting in Norton's "Witch World" novels and stories and also the name of the genre writers' research and reference library the author created in Tennessee (and closed in 2004). Female empowerment is a theme in several of these tales, as is Norton's love of clever tricksters who outwit the bullies of the world. Many of the pieces have a decidedly old-fashioned quality, including fairy tales such as "The Toymaker's Snuffbox" and the "The Dowry of the Rag Picker's Daughter." One of the most enjoyable stories is the lone sf offering, "All Cats Are Gray," about a ghostly space vessel. VERDICT There's a lot to enjoy here, but this somewhat haphazardly arranged collection is not a necessary purchase except for completists and Norton fanatics. (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
