Lord of Thunder Book

Even though this is a sequel to The Beast Master it works well as a standalone novel. If you always bear in mind its original intended market then it is an exciting, fast-paced, adventure story. Almost the opposite of space opera, this is a drama acted upon a limited stage - with a fair amount of stage-strutting and histrionics to be sure - but Hosteen Storm, the Navajo Terran Beast Master, and his telepathic animal team are heroes in both deed and word.

As always with Andre Norton's science fiction the imagination dominates the science. This does, however, allow for greater scope in world-building. Arzor, or the bit of it described in the story, is much like the 19th-century American West, with the horned Norbies as the native population and the Terran settlers herding their frawn and caring for their imported horses. Everyone is waiting for the arrival of the Big Dry, the sun scorched and arid dry season when settlers huddle around their water sources and Norbies retreat into their own shelter.

However, this year strange things happen. The Norbies are being summoned en masse into the Blue, the high mountain region of Arzor, and seem to be under a motivation to suspend their tribal feuds. Logan, Hosteen Storm's half-brother, has - to use an old term from the British Empire - gone native and joined the Norbies in their migration. And then a wealthy off-worlder called Lass Widders arrives who wants to launch an expedition into the Blue to find what he insists is the crash site of a space vessel carrying his son - and no money or resources are to be spared in finding him.

It all results in Hosteen trailing into the Blue to find out what is going on. In the process he comes across Logan. The pair get captured by Norbies and on the way to what seems to be their sacrifice come across Widders' space craft. What follows is the re-introduction of Arzor's ancient Forerunner civilization (first described in The Beast Master), as Hosteen and Logan are forced into the vast cave system beneath the mountain peaks of the Blue.

There is the usual Norton fascination with dark tunnels hiding goodness knows what, all of which is probably carnivorous and hungry, as the two heroes wander around discovering that the Forerunners had left some of their machines working and the lights on. The story takes a final complication with the appearance of survivors from the space wreck, one of whom is a deranged mad scientist of the old school who has enough knowledge to make the alien technology work - mainly the weapons. Hosteen and Logan have to capture him and leave him to Norbie justice and so quell the unrest.

Just a couple of points. Lass Widders' story about his son's shipwreck is originally presented as being highly suspicious as he flashes his cash along with his arrogant intolerance. However, in the caves, it turns out that he was only telling the truth. Sadly both he and his son meet grisly ends, thankfully off-stage. It all comes across as a bit of a needless red herring - there was an easier way of introducing the character of Dean, he was the mad scientist, on to Arzor. And then, in the depths of the caves, you have Hosteen and Logan's dismayed fear at coming across the skeletal remains of a large beast with three eyes - it almost unmans them, to use an old-fashioned term. It surprises me that they were unaware of Terran spiders, which usually have more than three eyes, and then there are the compound eyes of various insects. For me, seeing teeth large enough to be called fangs would have been the thing that released the old rectal and anal sphincters.

But that is just nit picking. Lord of Thunder is an enjoyable escapist adventure, one for the lockdown that will take your mind off Covid 19 for a few hours.