What do you think?
Rate this book
Moon Magic #1-2
Moonsinger
Moon of Three Rings: It is the time of the Moon of the Three Rings when the Free Trader ship Lydis lands on the primitive world of Yiktor, a world the Combine was seeking to control for the power the Three Rings would bring them. The life of a Free Trader was all junior crew member Krip Vorlund knew. That life ended at a beast show on Yiktor when Vorlund was strangely attracted to the owner of the show animals, a delicate and mysterious woman named Maelen. Too soon Vorlund learned the nature of Maelen's sorcery, too soon he is caught up in the struggle over the fate of a world.... But his soul would remain his own.
Exiles of the Stars: The galactic trade ship Lydis is making a run to the planet Thoth when a civil war lands her in a battle of ancient powers and nameless evil, with a Forerunner treasure at its heart. The crew seems normal-until you look closely at two of its members: Krip Vorlund, a man who walks in a body not his own, and his pet, a four-legged beast hiding the mind of Maelen the Moon Singer, a woman whose esper powers can save them all-or bring them to eternal destruction.
Publisher's Note: Moonsinger has appeared separately as Moon of Three Rings, and its sequel, Exiles of the Stars. This is the first time the complete saga has appeared in one volume.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
44 people are currently reading
275 people want to read
About the author
Andre Norton
698 books1,390 followersAndre 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
March 13, 2020
I read these back in the day, probably when they were new. Moon of Three Rings was first published in 1966 and Exiles of the Stars in 1971. I thoroughly enjoyed them then and they hold up pretty well, better than some others of that period, both from Norton and from others, like Heinlein.
This is one of her Free Trader stories with the main character Krip Vorlund, an assistant cargomaster who gets caught up in planetary politics that also touches the rivalry between Free Traders and the big companies or Combines of the inner planets. The Moonsinger of the omnibus title is Maelen of the Thassa, a wandering race on the planet Yiktor who are little known but not entirely trusted by plainsdwellers of that planet. Krip and his port leave partner are drawn to a beast show, where Maelen puts her little people through their paces with no coercion. Due to political maneuvering, Krip ends up transferred into the body of a barsk, a wild untamed animal of the planet, with the promise of being later reunited with his body. Problems ensue.
In Exiles of the Stars, Krip and Maelen take ship with Krip's ship Lydis and continue their voyaging to deliver cargo. They and the Lydis get caught up in a different planet's politics and religion.
As is often true of Norton's books, the main characters are part of something but still end up outsiders.
One thing I dislike of this edition is the cover art. Most of it is fine, showing Maelen concentrating with her wand of power. But her outfit is much too nearly-naked. I seriously doubt that she would sit cross-legged wearing that minimum bikini bottom. It looks most uncomfortable for that posture. We have grown up a bit since science fiction was marketed to adolescent boys.
This is one of her Free Trader stories with the main character Krip Vorlund, an assistant cargomaster who gets caught up in planetary politics that also touches the rivalry between Free Traders and the big companies or Combines of the inner planets. The Moonsinger of the omnibus title is Maelen of the Thassa, a wandering race on the planet Yiktor who are little known but not entirely trusted by plainsdwellers of that planet. Krip and his port leave partner are drawn to a beast show, where Maelen puts her little people through their paces with no coercion. Due to political maneuvering, Krip ends up transferred into the body of a barsk, a wild untamed animal of the planet, with the promise of being later reunited with his body. Problems ensue.
In Exiles of the Stars, Krip and Maelen take ship with Krip's ship Lydis and continue their voyaging to deliver cargo. They and the Lydis get caught up in a different planet's politics and religion.
As is often true of Norton's books, the main characters are part of something but still end up outsiders.
One thing I dislike of this edition is the cover art. Most of it is fine, showing Maelen concentrating with her wand of power. But her outfit is much too nearly-naked. I seriously doubt that she would sit cross-legged wearing that minimum bikini bottom. It looks most uncomfortable for that posture. We have grown up a bit since science fiction was marketed to adolescent boys.
February 10, 2016
Classic Norton adventure out among the stars that captivated me as a child and still do on return visits. Most of these are engaging adventures but what really catches the imagination are her settings, even more the parts that are just hinted at. The words disappear and you move through the stories feeling the rich landscape of interwoven cultures human and alien both in their present, recent past and the ancient hints of the forerunner civilizations. I especially like the Zero Stone and its sequel for this but Moonsinger and the others add to that.
November 1, 2024
Rereading a book that had a profound impact on oneself as a child is always a risk of disappointment. In the end my fondness for and gratitude to Andre Norton remain, but my feelings about the particular series are a bit mixed.
The books have been out of print and difficult to get and it was only when I saw that Baen had reissued them that I decided to try. Moonsinger collects the first two books of a very loosely coupled series.
Moon of Three Rings (#1) follows a young man called Krip Vorlund from a spacefaring, trading culture who ends up in various scrapes on a medieval planet on the brink of civil war. He helps a young woman called Maelen from a Gypsy like culture (also a wanderer and also an outsider to mainstream planetary culture) and in turn she uses her magic powers to help him evade capture and death. This involves him spending a lot of the book in a kind of alien wolf/fox like creature's body.
The book opens up a number of interesting philosophical questions. How much does your body affect your mind and how you think? How does being in a travelling culture affect your priorities? In what circumstances does the pressing need to save a friend override the oaths and rules that protect your people? Maelen is a woman of strong faith in fair judgement and life after death and assumes common spiritual and moral responsibility applies to all people whether they acknowledge it or not - is she right or naive?
These questions are all very well (and I can see a possible influence on LM Bujold) but any sketchy answers are rather buried among a lot of chasing and fighting and running away. I suspect Norton was a pantser writer. Also both POVs use a solemn old fashioned diction probably intended to accentuate their alien cultures (cf Star Trek's Worf) but which was at times just irritating and pretentiously humourless. 3 stars for book 1.
I read Exiles of the Stars (book 2) so long that I can't even accurately say how old I was. Yet I found it powerfully fascinating and unsettling and certain scenes have remained burned in my memory some 40 years later. It is an eerie and melancholy book. Maelen and Krip are on a Trader ship that is forced into an emergency landing on a supposedly uninhabited planet - but her psi powers convince her that something not human is watching them. Then they find a massive catlike face carved on a cliff... There is more running and chasing and body swapping in underground alien labyrinths, but with better tension and a bittersweet, more adult sensibility in the ending. Not in an R rated way, but considering what it means to be an exile from one's own people because of one's own choices. There is no overt romance (indeed, for quite long periods the characters are not even in bodies of compatible species) but K and M's alternating first person POV does across the two books produce a rather pleasing slow burn relationship nonetheless.
I think I must have been 8 or 9 when I read this, because by 10 I was reading Narnia and Peter Dickinson and at 11 I discovered Tolkein and Heinlein's juveniles and indeed more Norton (eg Sagasso of Space) and this would not have been nearly such a shock. I suspect was staying with my grandparents and had gone to the small town library, where my grandfather had read all the large print Westerns several times and the boundary between child, YA and adult SF was probably only a few feet of shelf space - and where my borrowing would barely have been scrutinised. So while my adult self found this entertaining but no big deal, I can see why as a gateway to a larger world of both speculative fiction and adult emotions it was so striking.
A final thought. 'Exiles' (pub 1971) is really not a long stretch from an episode of Stargate SG-1 for reasons I can't give without spoilers. Did any of the Stargate writers, like me, read this as impressionable youngsters? I'd love to know.
The books have been out of print and difficult to get and it was only when I saw that Baen had reissued them that I decided to try. Moonsinger collects the first two books of a very loosely coupled series.
Moon of Three Rings (#1) follows a young man called Krip Vorlund from a spacefaring, trading culture who ends up in various scrapes on a medieval planet on the brink of civil war. He helps a young woman called Maelen from a Gypsy like culture (also a wanderer and also an outsider to mainstream planetary culture) and in turn she uses her magic powers to help him evade capture and death. This involves him spending a lot of the book in a kind of alien wolf/fox like creature's body.
The book opens up a number of interesting philosophical questions. How much does your body affect your mind and how you think? How does being in a travelling culture affect your priorities? In what circumstances does the pressing need to save a friend override the oaths and rules that protect your people? Maelen is a woman of strong faith in fair judgement and life after death and assumes common spiritual and moral responsibility applies to all people whether they acknowledge it or not - is she right or naive?
These questions are all very well (and I can see a possible influence on LM Bujold) but any sketchy answers are rather buried among a lot of chasing and fighting and running away. I suspect Norton was a pantser writer. Also both POVs use a solemn old fashioned diction probably intended to accentuate their alien cultures (cf Star Trek's Worf) but which was at times just irritating and pretentiously humourless. 3 stars for book 1.
"Krip, you are the only one of us who has been through body switch. The Thassa do it regularly, do they not?... You have been through it and witnessed it done for that Maelen of yours. Do they use some machine, drug, type of hypnotism—what?" "They sing." I told him the truth. "Sing!"
I read Exiles of the Stars (book 2) so long that I can't even accurately say how old I was. Yet I found it powerfully fascinating and unsettling and certain scenes have remained burned in my memory some 40 years later. It is an eerie and melancholy book. Maelen and Krip are on a Trader ship that is forced into an emergency landing on a supposedly uninhabited planet - but her psi powers convince her that something not human is watching them. Then they find a massive catlike face carved on a cliff... There is more running and chasing and body swapping in underground alien labyrinths, but with better tension and a bittersweet, more adult sensibility in the ending. Not in an R rated way, but considering what it means to be an exile from one's own people because of one's own choices. There is no overt romance (indeed, for quite long periods the characters are not even in bodies of compatible species) but K and M's alternating first person POV does across the two books produce a rather pleasing slow burn relationship nonetheless.
I think I must have been 8 or 9 when I read this, because by 10 I was reading Narnia and Peter Dickinson and at 11 I discovered Tolkein and Heinlein's juveniles and indeed more Norton (eg Sagasso of Space) and this would not have been nearly such a shock. I suspect was staying with my grandparents and had gone to the small town library, where my grandfather had read all the large print Westerns several times and the boundary between child, YA and adult SF was probably only a few feet of shelf space - and where my borrowing would barely have been scrutinised. So while my adult self found this entertaining but no big deal, I can see why as a gateway to a larger world of both speculative fiction and adult emotions it was so striking.
A final thought. 'Exiles' (pub 1971) is really not a long stretch from an episode of Stargate SG-1 for reasons I can't give without spoilers. Did any of the Stargate writers, like me, read this as impressionable youngsters? I'd love to know.
October 23, 2017
a good read. not a lot of technical explanation, just a good story. If you are used to lots of science in your science fiction, you may not like her writings. sometimes, I just want a good sci fi story. She fits the bill.
August 14, 2018
Delightful.
These stories.we're my first intro.to Andre Norton. They remain as delightful a read as they were in my youth as I discovered her world's of fantasy, adventure, loyalty, and love.
These stories.we're my first intro.to Andre Norton. They remain as delightful a read as they were in my youth as I discovered her world's of fantasy, adventure, loyalty, and love.
April 12, 2019
Amazing
Andre Norton was one of the greatest writers of our time, and Moonsinger stands the test of time that all great novels someday face. Take a spin with this tale that is simultaneously high fantasy, and world spanning science fiction.
Andre Norton was one of the greatest writers of our time, and Moonsinger stands the test of time that all great novels someday face. Take a spin with this tale that is simultaneously high fantasy, and world spanning science fiction.
January 3, 2020
I last read this space opera in the '60s. A pleasant escape from reality
December 27, 2020
Moonsinger
Told as only Andre Norton could tell it. A planetary romance with the feel of the pulps but with modern sophistication. A good read.
Told as only Andre Norton could tell it. A planetary romance with the feel of the pulps but with modern sophistication. A good read.
April 20, 2021
Again Andre Norton has produced a masterpiece
Andre Norton at her finest, science fiction and fantasy combined to produce another of the masterpieces she is so well known fot.
Andre Norton at her finest, science fiction and fantasy combined to produce another of the masterpieces she is so well known fot.
July 12, 2022
To other worlds & people.
I love Andre Norton works. They take you throughout the universe, lead you to see through other eyes and are Goid reads. No shut, no garbage.
I love Andre Norton works. They take you throughout the universe, lead you to see through other eyes and are Goid reads. No shut, no garbage.
July 3, 2008
Imagine a world in which the billions and trillions that would normally be spent on war (like the current one) are used to fund the space program. Of course, a cynic would say that would only give us the opportunity to practice war on a grander scale. (We've played at genocide thus far-- let's try xenocide.) All the would-be NASA visionaries were given word processors at that one crucial moment and the Martian landing turned into the Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury.
Suffice to say, the book is exactly what I expected so far, an imaginative respite from the vampires, werewolves, and witches (oh my!) of today.
(This post is dedicated to Pluto, a one-time planet consigned to the dustbins of astronomy.)
Suffice to say, the book is exactly what I expected so far, an imaginative respite from the vampires, werewolves, and witches (oh my!) of today.
(This post is dedicated to Pluto, a one-time planet consigned to the dustbins of astronomy.)
August 16, 2017
Krip Vorlund is the junior cargomaster on the Free Trader ship Lydis. While planetside on the world of Yiktor, he gets into some trouble with the locals. To save his life, the Moonsinger Maelen transfers his mind-essence into the body of a barsk, a local predatory animal.
Krip later learns that his crewmates have claimed his original body and, thinking him to be dead, have ejected that body into space. Not wanting Krip to be trapped in the body of a beast forever, Maelen performs another ceremony, to transfer his mind from the barsk into a brain-dead Thassa male, Maquad.
But in doing this, Maelen breaks the laws of her people, and now she must accept their judgment ...
Krip later learns that his crewmates have claimed his original body and, thinking him to be dead, have ejected that body into space. Not wanting Krip to be trapped in the body of a beast forever, Maelen performs another ceremony, to transfer his mind from the barsk into a brain-dead Thassa male, Maquad.
But in doing this, Maelen breaks the laws of her people, and now she must accept their judgment ...
Read
February 10, 2016Classic Norton SF with Forerunners
As a kid the worlds painted by Norton out amongst the stars really caught my imagination. The stories are fun but the settings of life amongst the stars and the hints of forerunners are even more so. This is best in the Zero Stone and its sequel but the Moon Singer novels add to that.
As a kid the worlds painted by Norton out amongst the stars really caught my imagination. The stories are fun but the settings of life amongst the stars and the hints of forerunners are even more so. This is best in the Zero Stone and its sequel but the Moon Singer novels add to that.
January 14, 2014
I'm ambivalent about these two books. On the one hand, the reading was easy and the characters and world were interesting. But on the other hand, it didn't really capture my attention. This was my first Andre Norton, and I'm not sure if I'm going to seek out any more of her novels.
June 27, 2015
Classic Norten, yet a twist of mind powers & religion, using the term loosely , that allow the person to change bodies whilst staying themselves, perilous to sanity, exposure to other lives, bodies and cultures
June 27, 2016
Fairly typical Andre Norton. Definitely worth reading if you like this kind of stuff, but a definite "genre" book.
Some science fiction, some psy-powers stuff, body changing, etc.
This was 400 pages of small print, so if your eyesight isn't the best, consider reading the two books separately.
Some science fiction, some psy-powers stuff, body changing, etc.
This was 400 pages of small print, so if your eyesight isn't the best, consider reading the two books separately.
February 19, 2008
thought maybe I'd like it becuase Andre Norton is such a big name, I've liked other of her books, and the library was closing, but in the end not much hook to the story.
August 12, 2008
re-read - read both of these novels 30+ years ago.
October 18, 2009
I don't know why I didn't get in to Andre Norton when I was younger, but these books are great. I think long time Sci-fi fans will enjoy who haven't read and people who enjoy good books in general.
July 6, 2011
Contains two books.
Moon of Three Rings
Exiles of the Stars
Moon of Three Rings
Exiles of the Stars
May 6, 2016
A pleasant trip down memory lane. One of the first science fiction authors I ever read.
Read
July 25, 2013I read this last to understand the background to the two subsequent books, all are very readable
April 11, 2016
missing
April 26, 2017
A short take:
The prose in these books undid me. Both narrators are serious about every detail described, and this single register failed to keep my interest. The plot in each story was interesting and dragged down by detailed descriptions of decisions and moves made by the characters. Put simply, Norton's style in this duology was not to my tastes.
The prose in these books undid me. Both narrators are serious about every detail described, and this single register failed to keep my interest. The plot in each story was interesting and dragged down by detailed descriptions of decisions and moves made by the characters. Put simply, Norton's style in this duology was not to my tastes.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews