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(More customer reviews)"Sargasso of Space" (1955) and "Plague Ship" (1956) were the first two science fiction novels I ever checked out of our local library (I can still close my eyes and see that one dinky little shelf, crammed with some of SFs' greatest juvenile authors: Norton; Heinlein; Del Rey; Nourse).
This book contains the above two Solar Queen adventures and excludes her further travels in "Postmarked the Stars" and the novella, "Voodoo Planet." Norton's four-book series about the crew of the Solar Queen ended in 1969 with "Postmarked the Stars" but beware! Lesser authors have butted into the series, presumably with Norton's permission since this remarkable Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy and Nebula Grand Master is still writing (her first novel was published in 1934, her latest fantasy in 2002).
One Solar Queen rip-off to avoid at all costs is "Redline: the Stars."
Norton's Solar Queen stories are told from the viewpoint of Dane Thorson, an apprentice-Cargo Master who is introduced as a "lanky, very young man in an ill-fitting Trader's tunic." Most of this author's heroes and heroines are young, uncertain of themselves, shy, with a tendency to trip over their own enthusiasms and load themselves up with guilt at the slightest opportunity. They are very likeable and their adventures are narrated in remarkably lean prose with just the right touch of description.
After ten years of schooling, orphan Dane Thorson is assigned via a computer analysis of his psychological profile--not to a safe berth on a sleek Company-run starship that his classmates were vying for--but to a battered tramp of a Free Trader. To say that the 'Solar Queen' "lacked a great many refinements and luxurious fittings which the Company ships boasted" was an understatement. But she was a tightly-run ship and what she lacked in refinement, she made up for in adventure. Dane soon settles in under Cargo Master Van Rycke and learns "to his dismay what large gaps unfortunately existed in his training."
Sometimes I just want to give Dane a big hug.
The crew of the 'Solar Queen' risk their meager capital in a gamble at a Survey auction, and win trading rights to a barely explored planet with the unlucky name of Limbo. When they view a microfilm (okay, the technology is a bit dated in these books) of their new prize, it appears as though they have purchased ten years of trading rights to a planet that was burned to cinder during the heyday of the mysterious Forerunners, who predated humans in space.
Just when the Queen's fortune seems to be at its lowest ebb, a tough-looking archeologist shows up who is supposedly an expert on Forerunner artifacts, and charters her for a voyage to Limbo.
It might have been better for the free traders if her captain had kept his ship planeted and declared bankruptcy after the disastrous Survey auction.
"Plague Ship" takes the crew of the 'Solar Queen' to Sargol, where the enigmatic feline natives seem very reluctant to trade away their fabulous scented gemstones. When Dane Thorson discovers an herb that the Salariki are willing to swap for their gems, he fears that his eagerness to make a trade breakthrough might have poisoned a native child. That becomes the least of his worries when the 'Solar Queen' blasts off from Sargol with an invisible, undetectable stowaway that would brand the free traders anathema to all inhabited worlds.
Both of these Solar Queen novels are prime representatives of Norton's lean action-packed brand of story-telling. If you haven't read them since you were a teen-ager, I urge you to try them again. For a few pleasant hours, you will be immersed in the adventures of a likeable, feisty band of free traders on exotic, carefully-drawn alien worlds.
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The first two star-spanning tales of Dane Thorson and the Solar QueenAlmost half a century ago Andre Norton introducedapprentice Cargo Master Dane Thorson in Sargasso of Space and Plague Ship.Dane signed on with the independent cargo ship Solar Queen looking for a career in off-world trade. In Sargasso of Space, the Solar Queen free-traders win exclusive rights to trade with the planet Limbo, but the crew arrives to find most of its surface charred, with little sign of life.They find a valley with life, but others may still lurk.Worse yet, a strange force threatens to cripple the Queen. They must solve the planet's mysteries if they hope to escape with not only tradeable goods, but their lives.In Plague Ship, the Queen travels to Sargol, which promises a wealth of exquisite gems to trade-if the crew can overcome the native feline Salarikis' mistrust.But their troubles have just begun!.When a mysterious illness soon overtakes all the crew except the four youngest, the Galactic Patrol labels the Queen plagued and orders it destroyed on sight. With every ship in the galaxy searching for them, the crew have one chance to save the Solar Queen.But if their bold plan foils it would mean the end of the Solar Queen and its crew!
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