Witch World 2 - Setting & Characters

Apocryphal

This being an early pulp Science Fantasy novel of only 222 pages, Norton doesn't spend a lot of time developing the setting or characters. Compared to a modern fantasy brick or a work like the LOTR, do you view this favourably, unfavourably, or just accept it for what it is?

Were the characters distinct? Did you have any favourites? What about the villains?

And how about the setting? Did anything in particular stand out for you?

1970 Tandem SF cover by Philip Castle

clash_bowley

I rather like slim pulp books - my favorite author of all is Vance - but even in those slim volumes his settings are far more developed than this. Nothing about the witch world setting held together particularly well, and nothing stood out as non-generic for me. I don't know how the witch magic worked, beyond "Hey! Magic!", and it bothered me that the hero's witch GF decided to give up her powers while her country needed her. I saw no reason why either of them were attracted to the other other than expected romance. The guy reminded me of a classic D&D PC - An orphan from a long line of orphans, good at killing things, and the strong silent type...

Apocryphal

Yes, true - Vance does do a lot more with setting in a similar length. So did Leigh Brackett in The Ginger Star. And L. Sprague de Camp in The Clocks of Iraz. The only reason I don't think of this setting as 'generic' is because what I think of as a generic fantasy setting (which invariably has some kind of elf) didn't develop until after this book was written. So I'd say bland, rather than generic. Much of what was interesting came from outside the setting - but a place that HAS such aliens working as some kind of fifth column is itself interesting to me even if Estcarp itself was bland.

As for magic, yeah, not too interesting in this book, though I don't really need to know how it works so I don't care about that. And women giving up stuff for the big hero - bit of a staple of adventure stories, isn't it?

Classic D&D PCs? I thought so too. Maybe that's why Gygax liked it?

Overall, I liked the book - and I think the reason why is that it has this sort of vintage quality. It feels like an animated film from my youth, as if it belongs in the same sort of camp as Bakshi's Wizards.

clash_bowley

Yes - bland rather than generic - a better word. As for magic, I don't need to know how it works so much as I like self-consistency and the illusion that it isn't just ad-hoc whizz bang. I didn't care that the witch gave up her magic for her man - like you say, staple fare in those days! - I just didn't see her doing it in the middle of a vicious war, where before she seemed an intense patriot.

As for vintage, I have virtually no nostalgia, and don't understand it, so vintage is just old. Some things that are old are awesome, others are crap, so unless it's something like aged single malt, where the passage of years in a cask changes the flavor intensely, older is just older.

Apocryphal

Vintage means more than just old, and not quite nostalgia. It’s signifies an age gone by that will never return (though will likely be copied in parts at some time in the future) and that means the only way to experience it is by appreciating the vintage artifact for what it is. To enjoy experiencing the past doesn’t mean you long for it (which would be nostalgia). I see it as a type of time travel.

clash_bowley

Ah! An historical artifact! Yes! !

https://www.ttrpbc.com/uploads/editor/x9/qv5nft5lala0.gif

RichardAbbott

Spoiler alert - the whole "giving up her future for the hero" business is turned on its head at the start of the sequel _Web of the Witch World".

I must admit that I hadn't really noticed the shortness of the book! It seemed of a piece with most books of that era, which in my mind (leaving aside LOTR as a one-off case) seemed to change with the hugely long sagas like _The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant_ or the _Red/Blue/Green Mars_ books. Contrast for example the length of the early _Foundation_ books with the later ones.

The magic system (lack of) details didn't really bother me either, and I don't think Andre Norton was interested about spending narrative space on that. Her main focus, I think, was two-fold 1) describing the interaction between the various national / racial / social units in the world and 2) the infiltration of this world by interlopers with superior tech - another strand which is developed heavily in book #2

NeilNjae

I admit, I got utterly lost with all the bits of geography in the setting, and who was descended from what race and held what station, and what bits were regions or countries or cities, or what was close to what and far from what, and... It was just an amorphous soup of names that I rapidly couldn't be bothered to attempt to make sense of.

But saying that, the pace did keep up and things rattled along nicely.

I think she attempted to bring some personality into the lead characters, but they were mostly defined by action, not introspection.

The baddies being aliens? I didn't care one jot.

NeilNjae

One other thing. I got duped into thinking this was a collection of short stories, when the action changed without warning from Tregarth to Loyse. I could see no connection between the two, even initially doubting that they were set on the same world let alone being part of the same story.

RichardAbbott

@NeilNjae said:
One other thing. I got duped into thinking this was a collection of short stories, when the action changed without warning from Tregarth to Loyse. I could see no connection between the two, even initially doubting that they were set on the same world let alone being part of the same story.

I think this is another symptom of the time of writing of the book - Andre Norton tends here (and in some of her other books) to switch viewpoint character quite abruptly. This practice is nowadays more frowned upon, going by the name "head-hopping" and it is considered better style to signal more directly to a reader what is going on. It's obviously fine to still have multiple PoV characters, but not to jump around too much.

Apocryphal

Yeah, that little switch up led to think this was a fixup novel for a time, but that went away. I didn’t mind the switch, but it would have been very confusing had I been doing this as an audio book.

RichardAbbott

I came across some notes that Andre Norton made in 1979 about the origins of the whole Witch World saga (including maps ) which bear copying here from https://andre-norton.com/works-of-a-master/series-of-a-master/the-witch-world-saga

Witch World really grew from another idea altogether. Years ago, before I entered the sf-fantasy field of writing (no one was interested in buying ms. that were book length then), I had an idea dealing with the Norman holdings in Outremer during the Crusading period - those small baronies (etc) which were carved out and held by landless knights who did not wish to return to Europe after their long travel to the Middle East.

The section in the first book which deals with Verlaine and its heiress was an incident I had imagined for such a book. The book was never written except as scraps at the time. Then, much later, I came across the legend that the mysterious seat at the Round Table which came to be Galahads - The Siege Perilous - in reality dropped into another time and place those rash enough to try it who were not fitted to be seated there. That gave me an opening for an adventure tale.

Witch World was never meant to be a series - it just grew. And many of the books are based on authentic folk tales long in our knowledge. Warlock of the Witch World, for example, is really a retelling of the old Saxon story of Childe Roland. Year of the Unicorn is a version of Beauty and the Beast - and so on.

I research heavily for each book or tale - not only in the field of legend and folk story, but also in history of the middle ages and early English and British material. Over the years I have acquired an extensive personal library of folklore, history and witchcraft material to which I go for reference.

I have to ration myself now with Witch World books as I do not want to start repeating myself - which is easy to do with a too familiar background. So I do not write one as often as I wish, and I do try to get an unfamiliar background as much as I can. My most recent work is one laid in the mysterious south from which the Falconers first came and gives a clue to the reason for their warped life style - it is a shorter work entitled Falcon Blood and has a Sulcar girl for a heroine.

But one does have to deal with a great many small details and I now have a special Witch World book with backgrounds for the already printed stories, etc. so that I won't make any glaring mistakes.

(Both maps by Mary Hanson-Roberts ~ 1986)

Apocryphal

Very cool. I noticed her website has lost of maps.