The Witches of Karres
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15
Ratings5
Average rating4
HIS LUCK HAD FINALLY TURNED...
... and for the worse. Unlucky at love, unsuccessful in business, unable to win friends and influence people, Pausert thought he had finally found his niche: captaining the stout old tramp starship VENTURE and her odd-lot cargoes around the fringes of the Empire. He'd even taken to performing the odd noble deed, such as freeing three poor little child-slaves from their abusive masters. Strange, though, how eager those sadistic bullies had been to let them go, and even stranger how quickly those adorable little girls made Pausert the mortal enemy of his fiancee, his planet, the Empire, the Sirians, the Uldunians, the dread pirate chieftain Laes Yango -- and the Worm World, the darkest threat to mankind in all of space. It was all very mysterious -- until Pausert realized that he was dealing not with a trio of underage slaves, but three of THE WITCHES OF KARRES!
Series
3 primary booksThe Witches of Karres is a 3-book series with 3 primary works first released in 1966 with contributions by James H. Schmitz, Eric Flint, and 2 others.
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This is based on a novelette written in 1949, which takes up the first two chapters of the book; I read it on its own in my youth and was fond of it. In 1966 the author decided to extend it into a novel, which I discovered later. The novel doesn't quite maintain the charm of the novelette, but it's an acceptable continuation, and readable enough, though none of it is meant to be taken seriously.
The whole thing is a strange mixture of sf and fantasy, spaceships and magic, plus magic-using children as active participants in the plot. There's something rather childish about it. But it makes a pleasant easy read if you have no objection to old-style sf/fantasy with a touch of childishness.
After the initial novelette, in which the young spaceship-piloting Pausert meets three child witches of Karres, the rest of the novel describes his adventures roaming the galaxy in the company of one of them: his magically-talented nine-year-old first cousin once removed, who has already declared her intention of marrying him. A modern author might be nervous about using such a pair as his lead characters, but Schmitz was born in 1911 and handles the situation with casual innocence.
