The X Factor

Human misfit steals spaceship and lands on an alien version of Brigadoon where he contends with telepathic meerkats and space pirates. Repetitious and tedious, the story plods along making its 158 pages seem more like 400 (thanks in part to the tiny print) and that big dramatic payoff sort of fizzles and pops. Definitely not her best.

An Andre Norton short SF novel. Her SF novels fall within an incredibly narrow range of quality -- readable, well-paced -- but neither innovative nor speculative. They typically followed one character from a hard life to eventually reaching a somewhat better situation, helped both by a lot of coincidence, and personal grit. The SF novels usually have a common background, with blasters and stunners, the Galactic Patrol, and Scouts, and the occasional artifact or site from the long-gone Forerunners. But this was less universe building that a convenient shorthand to allow her to tell her (usually male) adventure story. In this case, Diskan Fentess, oafish bitter son of a passing Scout (more about Scout marriages in Dread Companion), steals show more a ship (about as difficult as hot-wiring a car) to a mysterious planet, whereupon he has survives shipwreck and blizzard, to form a vague telepathic alliance with local cat-like natives (as in Beastmaster).

If you've never read Norton, or only read her WitchWorld books, this is a perfectly reasonable entry. show less

A pillar of the early Sci-Fi writers (and female authors in the genre) – Andre Norton wrote 50+ books, with a particular flair for the pulpy adventure-based sci-fi and fantasy novels popular during the early days of those genres.
This one is no different. The main character, an outcast on his own planet, runs away and travels to a planet his father once visited. Here, he travels across the inhospitable waste towards a city, drawn to it by strange dreams and even strangers meetings of the local natives.
There are the general laser pistols, strange native mysteries, dastardly off-planet robbers, the pretty, terrified, girl in need of rescue, and the enigmatic non-humans. As vintage sci-fi goes, this is an excellent example. But for show more modern eyes, it will seem dated. It’s fast-paced, with a strange ending, and the general drama of an adventure novel.
As with Norton’s other book, this is a fun and pulpy read. show less

Not one of her best but not a bad story of a young man who, finding himself in a world where he doesn't belong, steals one of his Dad's journey tapes from an isolated planet and heads that way.

He finds himself in a world where his mental telepathy is a factor and where he has to join with other sentients on the world to help fix the problem.

It's not one of my favourites but it's not a bad read.

VG