Star Hunter

By: Andre Norton

Narrated by: Jim Roberts

Andre Alice Norton was one of the most popular and prolific American authors of science fiction and fantasy. She also wrote under the names Andrew North and Allen Weston. She was the first woman to receive the Gandalf Grand Master Award from the World Science Fiction Society in 1977, and she won the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of American in 1983.

In this story, a teenage boy suddenly finds himself whisked away for his dead-end job on an outlying planet to a jungle planet where he begins having strange dreams of his past. Suddenly, he finds himself in the middleof a thrill-packed plot involving a criminal mastermind and Rass Hume, the "ouhunterr" who was responsible for the sudden change in his fortunes. The action becomes intense when all parties on the planet discover that they are being stalked by a strange alien entity that manifests itself in many forms.

©2006 Andre Alice Norton (P)2010 Jimcin Recordings

Spell binder

Andre Norton is one of the greats of Science Fiction and this, like just about everything she wrote, is a spell-binding yard with a little food for thought thrown in. Good reading, too.

Action Oriented

What did you like best about Star Hunter? What did you like least?

This book is action oriented. If you are looking for in depth characterization or cerebral science fiction, this book is not it. Instead, it's a good action book involving people and space. A disgruntled guild spacer finds a crashed ship belonging to a very wealthy family. There were no survivors. He approaches a criminal mind with a plan to provide a substitute for a young family member in order to get access to those funds that the kid would inherit.

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

This narrator is not an actor. Takes a couple of chapters to get accustomed to that since we are SO spoiled with actors doing many of Audible's titles. Stick with it. He has a good voice, good cadence and you get used to him within a couple of chapters.

Any additional comments?

This book was published in 1961. Parents shouldn't hesitate to recommend this book to their young teenaged scifi fans. This is a short book, just a bit longer than a novella.

I wish I'd listened to the sample

When I saw this Andre Norton story on sale, I broke a longstanding rule for audiobook purchases: I didn't listen to the sample before buying. Having grown up reading Norton stories in the local library's collection, I was so excited about finding this one in audio format that I just hauled out the credit in a flash and made the purchase. Note to self: don't do that again. This isn't one of Norton's best stories, but it's worth reading or listening to. Unfortunately, Mr. Roberts' performance made it a very painful experience. Near-monotonic voice, unrhythmic reading with sentences broken in odd places (whether for breath or from poor reading skills, I don't know), very little difference in the characters' voices, and what seemed to be a New York accent of some sort... all contributed to making me regret the purchase. It took me a long time finish listening to the story, and I finished it only because I couldn't remember how the last quarter or so of the book went. I immediately deleted the file from my hard drive. If you can find the book, young adults might enjoy it, but I don't recommend this audio version.