Andre Norton Forum

The best witch world book, by anyone

The Best Witch World Book (by Andre Norton or anyone)

The Witch World, of course. The first is the best, an utterly captivating immersion, for its hero and for ourselves, in a new and wonderful culture.

The first pages, with Simon in Cornwall, could come from straight from film noir or perhaps from a clone of John le Carre. Dark grey is the dominant impression and then the book hits its first high point - the wonderful conceit of the Siege Perilous. Has anyone read this book without wondering what kind of world the stone would send him or her? So much of Norton's work has been about juveniles finding themselves in the world (including the Tregarth triplets' entries into the original series). The Witch World is completely about adults - very adult adults - but it too is about finding the right life for oneself: for Simon, for Jaelithe, for Loyse, and for Koris.

When Simon appears in the Witch World, it is not like Dorothy's entry into Oz, with a shift from sepia to Technicolor. The moors along the borders of Alizon and Estcarp ­ like the moors along the borders of Cornwall ­ are bleak. But it does offer one clean break, a fight between a woman and pursuing hunters that he instinctively feels is, unlike the world he has known, a fight in which, without thought, he can side with clear good over clear evil. The book's world opens up as it goes along, becoming progressively more magical and colorful . . . although certainly never chirpy.

I particularly liked two aspects of this book that have gradually disappeared from the Witch World. One was the emphasis on the combination of magic and high technology. Es's glowing globes, the modern sanitation that Simon approvingly notes, Sulcarkeep's (nuclear?) power source coexist with illusion and shape-changing. Over time, magic seems to have taken over the Witch World, which I think hurts the stories. The second was the namelessness of the witches. It gave them a sense of illusion, of unity and lack of individuality. And it made Jaelithe's rebellion more powerful. By the late books, the witches have been given "false" names - Gull, etc. I can see how, just as a matter of narrative style, it can be hard to describe a scene without names for several of the characters. But I regret this change.

The first book has one other noteworthy quirk, although I'm not sure what it means. All three of the main female characters are described in one strikingly similar respect. Jaelithe is described as having her jewel "between the small mounds of her breasts." 33. When Loyse is first described, we are told that "Her body was as straight and slender as a boy's, with only shadow curves to hint she was not a lad" 67. Simon finds that Aldis is not the "over-ripe and full curved" woman Jaelithe described, but instead had the form "of a young girl not fully awakened to her own potentialities, with small high breasts modestly covered, yet perfectly revealed," p. 140. I'm happily married to a women with "small high breasts," but I don't understand the prejudice against full figures - or quite why all the women's breasts had to be described at all.

I first read the Witch World in the mid- to late-1960s, when I was in junior high school or early high school. I read it again within the past year, in part thinking that my third grader might enjoy it. It's not for him ­ yet. It may not have been for me when I first read it. I did not remember the harshness of the book, the merciless and vicious nature of the initial fight between Jaelithe and the Alizonders, the attempted (and nearly completed) rape of Jaelithe in Verlaine. The Witch World generally is a place where no quarter is given, or asked; a place whose rules of engagement appear to violate international and U.S. military law. But I do hope that he, and his younger sister, will read it someday. It is one of THE very best books of fantasy around and the first opening into one of the richest and most textured fantasy worlds in existence. Plus, I want them to read through the dense first 220 pages and come to the fourth paragraph from the end:

"Doubtless he shall," she agreed to his statement concerning Fulk with her usual tranquillity. "As you have said, we are still in the midst of a war, and not victors at the end of one. Verlaine and Karsten, too, shall be attended to in their proper seasons. Simon, my name is Jaelithe."

"It came so abruptly, that for a full moment he did not understand her meaning."

But we do. And I hope, eventually, my children will, too.

Coming next, the WORST Witch World book (and it's a real stinker)