Voorloper

by Andre Norton

An embittered wanderer, his son, and a young girl with healing gifts explore the wastelands of a new planet, risking their lives to learn its horrible secret.

Genres: Science Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fiction, Fantasy

267 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1980

About the author

Andre Norton, born Alice Mary Norton, was a pioneering American author of science fiction and fantasy, widely regarded as the Grande Dame of those genres. She also wrote historical and contemporary fiction, publishing under the pen names Andre Alice Norton, Andrew North, and Allen Weston. She launched her career in 1934 with The Prince Commands, adopting the name “Andre” to appeal to a male readership. After working for the Cleveland Library System and the Library of Congress, she began publishing science fiction under “Andrew North” and fantasy under her own name. She became a full-time writer in 1958 and was known for her prolific output, including Star Man’s Son, 2250 A.D. and Witch World, the latter spawning a long-running series and shared universe. Norton was a founding member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America and authored Quag Keep, the first novel based on the Dungeons & Dragons game. She influenced generations of writers, including Lois McMaster Bujold and Mercedes Lackey. Among her many honors were being the first woman named Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy and SFWA Grand Master. In her later years, she established the High Hallack Library to support research in genre fiction. Her legacy continues with the Andre Norton Award for young adult science fiction and fantasy.

Reviews

[Brent · Rating 2 out of 5]

As much as I enjoy Andre Norton, this is not one of her better books.

[Tina · Rating 2 out of 5]

There’s not a ton to say about Voorloper. It’s a fairly hum-drum book. I didn’t dislike it but I wasn’t entirely engaged with the story or the characters.

Part of the issue might have been that the book has pictures every few pages. I’m not sure what the point was, as they didn’t add anything that the writing lacked. It made me wonder whether the book was intended for younger readers, though the seriousness of the tone seemed to contradict that idea.

The reason the story is so unengrossing is because of the way it’s told. It’s in first person, with a very didactic style. There is so much telling and not showing. Bart is always saying: “I was angry. I was scared,” but there’s no tension behind it because we never experience what his body is doing. He tells his story like a history textbook. Likewise, if there was supposed to be romantic or sexual tension between Bart and Illo, it’s entirely missing. Normally I’d find it refreshing when two characters aren’t forced together, but a romance would have made the story more compelling because nothing else in the story was.

I did enjoy the mystery behind the old alien relics, the setting, and how much agency Illo had, but the novel lacked so much in tension I found it hard to pay attention.

Without going into any spoilers, the final explanation of what occurred on Voor is a very thin critique of colonialization, which felt less like an allegory or warning than something she thought up to suit the story. If there had been more hints throughout, perhaps if Bart had learned more about the planet’s history as they went, rather than just an info dump, it might have had more weight.

Overall, it wasn’t a book I disliked by any mean, it was just a little boring.


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[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not one of Ms. Norton's best. I mean, I would rather be forced to read this EVERY DAY rather than reading anything Robert James Waller, or whatever his name is, wrote, but she sort of phoned this one in.

[Erika Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a great breakthrough into the sci-fi genre, and the the actual story would have been great if the writing wasn't so awful. The action scenes go somewhat like this: "The beast crawled out of the water. I shot it. It had no brain. I shot it again. It died." Also the cover doesn't really make any sense :/

[Nicole Wagner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a unique science fiction tale that includes fifty stunning line drawings by Alicia Austin (http://www.aliciaaustin.com), I mean absolutely beautiful images that resemble Grecian urn paintings or art deco graphic figures. I'm afraid my copy was missing the dust jacket and I only saw what that looked like when adding the book to my Goodreads shelf.

The story is a frontier adventure, a man-vs-environment sort of coming of age tale that has common threads with Gary Paulsen's Hatchet books but with a distinct 1980 terroir. Combining elements of interstellar colonization, speculative technology, malevolent greed, genetic manipulation, and shamanism, this was a thoroughly enjoyable sci-fi episode.

Notable highlight:
"The life essence we knew was but a part of something else which had an existence beyond our comprehension, and we must accept death as a door opening and not a gate slammed shut."

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

So all four of these books, X factor-Sioux Spaceman- Eye of the monster-Voorloper, are loosely (very loosely IMO) tied together under series title Of Stars and Comets. What they have in common are young people on alien planets coming up against a big problem (often moral like slavery, abuse, displaced people) and coming up with heroic solutions. And of course, tied into an SF adventure. I think the first two do a good job both with the adventure and the hero business. Eye is the weakest of the four, with the evil reptilian race or Crocs being very much a stereotype. And the mix in of religious ministry vs technology did not help much either. Voorloper was adequate.
By the way, my copy is a hardcover book club edition not a paperback.

[Snood · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The Shadow Death struck Mungo Town just after harvest, as if it had purposefully waited to give the greatest pain, the harshest of deaths.”

I don’t think there’s a better opening sentence to simultaneously amuse, baffle, and intrigue a reader than this. I’m more of a fan of horror and Twilight Zone style “cerebral sci-fi”, but the cool alien dinosaur on the cover, the fun premise, and perfect opening line drew me in.

It’s possible that to a more experienced genre reader, this is a fairly standard book but the lifestyle of the Voorlopers, the giant semi-sentient buffalo-like Gar, and the mystery behind what the “Shadow Death” truly is wrapped me up in a very cozy sci-fi adventure that I binge-read the second half of in a day.

[Wilson E. Stevens Sr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good book. The planet is troubled with a plague that is killing the people in the north part of the planet. This results in a group of wandering gypsies called Voorloper's. This is the story about a Voorloper that survived the plague, with another survivor that is a healer. They look for and find the cause of the plague, and stop it. This is the third time I have read this book, and I have enjoyed it every time.

[Brian Berrett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m sorry to say I didn’t enjoy the book more than I did. I’ve had the book in my library for over 30 years and finally decided to pick it up and read it. I had a hard time feeling engaged by the story. I found my mind would wander. I was interested in the ancient evil and what they eventually found, but didn’t care for the ease (and it was a bit confusing) with which they took care of it.

[J.L MacFarlane · Rating 2 out of 5]

The illustrations were really cool, but felt like they interrupted the story too many times. Plus I felt disappointed that the creature featured on the cover wasn’t really that important to the story.

I kept on putting the book down more times then I could count.

Overall it’s a meh kind of story that could of used more time to smooth out things for a more enjoyable story.

[Shari Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first time she has ever disappointed me. This could have been a great story, instead it was bogged down repeated by incomprehensible descriptions of imaginary (?) people, places and things. Luckily I know that she is a better writer than this.

[Kat Hooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Will review at Fantasy Literature.

[James]

An embittered wanderer, his son, and a young girl with healing gifts explore the wastelands of a new planet, risking their lives to learn its horrible secret.

[Alexander Winzfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

Suffers from 'should have been a novella'-itis but, all in all, a perfectly acceptable space adventure.

[Isabel (kittiwake) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Voor's world. The planet had once seemed so open and welcoming - but perhaps my kind were never meant to - I shook my head vigorously as if I could so flip away that insidious conclusion. Each and every world which my species had colonized had had one problem or another. that quality of need for mastery, which was a birth-part of us, was always so awakened into life to set us hammering some very hostile planets into earth-homes. No world was ever a paradise without any danger. In fact such might have been far worse a pitfall for my kind than the worse stone-fire-airless hell. We would only have atrophied there - become nothing.

I don't usually read YA fiction, but I picked this one up at a BookCrossing meeting. I think I read one of more Andre Norton books as a teenager, but she wrote so many books that I don't think I will ever be able to work out which ones I have read before, but I am sure that I have never read Voorloper before.

Fifty years after the colonisation of the agricultural planet of Voor, settlements in the north start to be wiped out by the mysterious Shadow Death, leaving everyone dead except for a few small children, all second generation settlers. When Mungo Town was destroyed, the only survivor was a five-year-old boy called Bart, who was left with no memories of what had happened, His father Mac also survived because he was away from home when the Shadow Death struck, and after the tragedy Mac and Bart became voorlopers, nomadic traders whose goods are carried in covered wagons pulled by gars (draught animals native to Voor, similar to yaks but with three horns). For near ten years of my life I had known Witol, yet never had he given me this salute. We had often speculated, my father and I, as to the intelligence of the gars - now I believed I had proof that they were indeed more than just the bearers of burdens which off-worlders classed them as being.

The northern lands are now mostly deserted, but there are a few mining settlements, protected by force fields and Mac and Bart are the only voorlopers to trade with them, which gives Mac the change to investigate the deserted holdings while he is on his way to and from the mines. A young healer called Illo, who also has an interest in the Shadow Death, asks to accompany them as they head north into the wilderness, but a violent storm changes everything.

The story has lots of black and white line illustrations, so you can see what the gars look like and get a clear picture of how the colonists dress, but Illo is always shown with loose hair, even though the book says that she wears her hair tightly tied back as all the healers do. The cover picture is very misleading; featuring a water creature that appears in one short scene. It has "a webbed and taloned paw, larger than my own hand" and it is described as clambering onto the top of the wagon, so it is obviously nowhere near as large as the Godzilla-sized monster shown on the cover, and is probably more like the size of a large salt-water crocodile.

But aside from the issues with the illustrations, and it being a YA novel, I did like it, especially the gars which are strong, reliable, loyal and intelligent.

[Valerie]

I'm at something of a loss to understand the cover picture. I'll reread carefully, but I don't recall any oceanic bodies of water at all. From what I can tell, Voor is a planet consisting almost entirely of prairies. Ok, found it. Despite the oceanic scene on the cover, the creature in question is encountered in the aftermath of a flash flood. It's a distinctly minor encounter, with essentially no impact on the plot. Why on the cover? Well, it's scary looking, and isn't that justification enough?

Note that grasslands on Earth are heavily dependent on repeated wildfires, yet Norton routinely ignores this fact. Perhaps the climate on Voor is different enough from Earth climates that fires are unnecessary to prevent the development of extensive forests--it's hard to tell, because the description generally ignores fires.

This is one of Norton's books that includes the 'man-eating' plants called (in some versions) red-heads. I have no idea what Norton's source for these creatures is. There's no plant I know of which is even remotely like this, but Norton seemed fascinated (in a revolted way) with the idea, and couldn't seem to let go of it.

The historical story the protagonists discover (and play a very minor part in) is heavily spun in favor of the humanoid native species. Stripped of the self-justifications, the essential argument for a mutually annihilatory blood-feud on the parts of the local peoples and the refugee immigrants is that the immigrants were universally and hopelessly corrupt, and turned 'harmless' biotechnology to perverse and violent use, so that the natives were forced to suicide, and set up a trap to destroy the force that survived even the slaughter of all the refugees.

The protagonists argue that they are not likewise corrupt, and that they and their families were victims of the undead force by mischance--they happened to have come into the penumbra of the evil force while it was starving, having eaten all the people and being (apparently) unable to adjust to non-humanoid fare (however intelligent, like the gars). Maybe. On the other hand, the protagonist's ruthless behavior toward the Tangle argues that they must include some of the same corruption. Even when they learn that the stunners KILL the Tangle, they don't try negotiating--they just keep spraying away. There's evidently some intelligence in the Tangle, and once the plants realized that they were in danger, they might have backed off by themselves (at some points they seem to be trying)--but nobody bothers to take the time to find out.

Well, we'll try to give them the benefit of the doubt. We'll assume that the arrival of our heroes triggered an end to the old feud, and that the newcomers won't start any others. Out of curiosity, though, I wonder what kind of trouble those oldtime refugees were fleeing from?

[Anne Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember liking this book very much, but it's been a while since I've read it. The story... is okay. It's a fairly standard banish-the-ghosts-and-monsters tale. The characters are likeable enough, but not outstandingly so.

What seems special about this book is the world. Mom has the illustrated version, and the pretty pictures help. It helps even more that they're pretty pictures of a world which is not of the past - all women wear pants - but where hand-made art is valued. I know they have to make things by hand because it's a sparsely settled frontier planet. Still, they don't have to embroider thoise clothes, yet the text and the pictures agree. The text also mentions carving on buildings. The pictures also show cups that have designs on their side. The people value art that isn't computerized, and they're willing to do it widely. I haven't seen that in science fiction; handmade goods are usually rare, unless they have a strong back-to-basics movement. Even then, the crafts seem to be rarely adorned. Voor is different, and I like that very much. {Smile}

[Moe Shinola · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first Andre Norton book I've read and I'll certainly be reading more from this author.
Ths story pulls you in from the 1st sentence. She has one of those styles that makes it easy to
forget where you are and really enter the environment she's describing, and she has a gift for
doing so with economy, kinda like a cross between Tolkien and Thomas Harris. I must say that I
liked the 2nd half of the book better than the first, and the payoff at the end was not satisfactory
to me after such a good buildup, but you might think differently so don't let this put you off. Recommended.

[S.A. Parham · Rating 4 out of 5]

REREAD. I'll always love Norton's sci-fi work, but reading them as an adult is quite a different experience from reading them as a teen. It's still a good story and I like the characters, but her pace is slow and will lose readers used to modern science fiction.

[Randy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Andre Norton wrote more than 300 novels, in 70 years of writing. I don't think this was one of the best. I first read this book in the early 1980s, and I thought I'd give it another chance. I'm glad that I did, just as a personal memory check. It was no better this time than it was back then.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was entertaining enough, but there wasn't much meat on them bones.

[SciFiOne · Rating 4 out of 5]

1982 grade B+
2012 grade B

[Michael Nalbone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Diverting.