Tales From High Hallack, Volume 1: The Collected Short Stories of Andre Norton, Volume 1 by Andre NortonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I'd heard so much about Andre Norton that I was so excited to get a copy of this to read through Edelweiss. I know, it was released like eons ago, but hey, if they're still offering review copies, I should take it, right?
And then I realised that to actually understand a full half of these stories as they should be properly understood, you should already be familiar with all of Norton's other writings. Because when you jump into a collection of stories from High Hallack without any idea what High Hallack actually is all you get is extremely confused. I liked better the folktale retellings than the actual spec fic I was expecting, probably because I didn't have to think so hard about what she was trying to say.
Overall, a couple of general notes before I get to the specifics of the stories -
1) You'd probably like it better if you like older-style writing. Sorry, but I gave up reading classics for a reason, most of all because I'm a lazy modern reader. It's like wading through Tolkien again after you've been reading Hobb for a while. (The story is still good, but UGH you have to think so much)
2) This was an unproofed ARC uploaded to Edelweiss way back, so there were like a gazillion typos; hopefully this was fixed in the actual release.
Briefly, the ones I really liked were:
- The Gifts of Asti
- The Dowry of the Rag Picker's Daughter
- All Cats Are Gray
- Black Irish
- Through the Needle's Eye
- The Toymaker's Snuffbox
- Dream Smith
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Still not too late to grab an ARC and help host Coexist ;)
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