The Defiant Agents

Time Traders/Ross Murdock #3

by Andre Norton

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Time Travel, Ebooks, Fantasy, Audiobook

151 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 1, 1962

About the author

Andre 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.

Reviews

[Karl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the third book in Andre Norton's 'Time Traders" series.

The series consist of:

The Time Traders (1958)
Galactic Derelict (1959)
The Defiant Agents (1962)
Key Out of Time (1963)
Firehand (1994) (with Pauline M Griffin)
Echoes in Time (1999) (with Sherwood Smith)
Atlantis Endgame (2002) (with Sherwood Smith)

Note: This edition is not a library copy.

[Lyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The very first SF book I read was Andre Norton's "The Defiant Agents." I was thirteen at the time and my mother bought it for me by mistake. By that, I mean she opened it at random and read, "fresh hoof prints" and thought, "Lyn will enjoy this, it's about horses."

LOL nope, it was about time agents (actually the third book in a series) and I was hooked from the very beginning. I remember feeling a sense of outrage when Colonel Kelgarries sends Ashe to New York and then immediately orders the Apaches to the isolation of the "Hypno-Lab, knowing that Ashe can't possibly warn them before his plane leaves. Subterfuge, trickery, and betrayal. All the makings of a good read. Andre Norton has the ability to make you love some characters and hate others so much that you wish you could smash them in the face (but then that's my thirteen-year-old self talking) :-)

I can't say how many times I've read it - at least twenty I would think. It's been a few years since I last read it, so I think it's time to dust it off and travel once more with Travis Fox and his fellow Apache to the jewel-like disk of gold-brown called Topaz.

[astaliegurec · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm torn. Andre Norton's "The Defiant Agents" (the third in her "Time Traders" series) is well-written at the technical level: the story follows its premise nicely and the world and characters are reasonably done. But, the premise and setup are, in a word, stupid. Here are the problems (and all of this shows up in the first chapter or so):

- First, as near as I can tell, this book takes place about 18 months after the end of the previous book. Somehow, in that time, they've not only reverse-engineered the alien ship they found, but also managed to build their own such ships. I have no idea how they managed that or where they found similar materials, fuel, or a compatible control system.

- Second, for no rational reason, it seems that when the crew returned at the end of the last book, they decided to share not only the technology of the ship, but the actual navigation "tapes" they came back with (and the tapes went out by lot (i.e., random tapes to random countries)). Together, this amounts to the giving away of worlds to not just allies, but to actual enemies (remember, this is a world mired in a Cold War). Since the return trip in that book was a mirror image of the forward trip, I'd assume they'd have landed where they took off. IOW, outside of a UFO report, no one should have known about any of this and everything would have, could have, and should have remained secret.

- Third (and this one's the killer), for various reasons, someone decided that it would be a good idea to use a handy newfangled invention to turn their hand-picked, volunteer, cream-of-the-crop colonists into savages by mentally regressing them to their ancient ancestors' time. Why they would want a colony to be populated by ignorant, superstitious savages, I don't know. Well, actually, I do know. Supposedly, it's to give them that survival edge that's been bred out of their current civilization. But,...

- Fourth, the trip time from Earth to Topaz (the colony world) is never stated, but from the trip time in the previous book, it's probably on the order of days. So, instead of sending a live-off-the-land colony, they should have been sending a super high tech colony and shuttling in new materials and people constantly.

-Fifth, the colony they sent wasn't big enough for a good gene pool. Plus, with the racial selection process they used, the gene pool they did have is too closely related.

So, as I said, I'm torn. With the above premises, I could have given the book two stars. But, again, the writing in support of those premises is fine. After waffling over this, I've decided to go with the OK 3 star out of 5 rating. But, I could very easily see why someone else might rate it lower.

The books in Andre Norton's "Time Trader" series are:

1 and 2: Time Traders: The Time Traders & Galactic Derelict
3: The Defiant Agents
4: Key Out of Time
Comment Comment | Perm

[Julie Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second book in the Time Traders series which I also had on my Kindle, I began this one after reading Time Traders. It was perfect vacation reading and one that I hadn't read before.

One of Andre Norton's friends wondered why there were no sf books with Apaches in them so she obligingly wrote this interesting tale of time travel. When a troop of modern scientists, who also happen to be Apaches, are nefariously injected with a drug that forces their minds to revert to ancient patterns (in this case, that of Indians in the Old West) and then loads them onto a spaceship for a planet that they want explored ... well, we know something is going to go wrong. The ship crashes and the scientists are left battling not only their "double minds" with tendencies to revert to the old ways while also retaining knowledge of the "new ways" but also each other and a mysterious band of other "natives" they discover. Yes, the Cold War continues with the Reds' attempt at the same thing and the mysterious, evil aliens interfering as well.

Great fun and, as I said, a great vacation read.

[Alexandra]

8/13/19 FREE for Kindle

[Isabella · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rating: 2.5 stars

This was weird. It was just... odd. I won't really go into plot specifics here, because while it wasn't all that memorable to begin with, the things that made The Defiant Agents weird are the same things that affected the plot.

The time difference between books two and three makes no sense for them to have achieved all this stuff. Timeline-wise, The Defiant Agents starts 18 months after Galactic Derelict (I googled it) and yet, they have made these gigantic strides in technology that would normally take years to establish. They found this alien ship in the previous book, and in less than two years, have managed to not only understand it at a fundamental level, but have somehow developed such an advanced comprehension of what was not long ago literal alien technology that they can build a fleet of said ships. A civilisation that was leagues ahead of humanity in every way, and I'm supposed to believe we cut open a few ships, looked at a few control panels, and now we are standing alongside them? Sorry, but that's nowhere near plausible in my eyes.

The second thing is this "science" of reverting individuals back to the people their ancestors were. Aside from the question of why anyone would find a group of de-evolved humans useful (they wanted a couple of ooga-boogas around, idk), I also am confused as to how they would know what ancestors to choose. I was born in Aotearoa/New Zealand, but my people are not from here, i.e. I am not Māori. In a similar vein, I also have a decent amount of Australian blood, but I have no ethnic connection to any of its indigenous peoples. I have mostly German and English blood. So do I revert back to an Anglo-Saxon? Or maybe a member of one of the Germanic tribes, like the Goths? If that is the case, I am so disconnected from those parts of the world, that what's the point of doing it in the first place? Maybe I'm just not a good example, so I wouldn't be an ideal test subject, a fact I am more than happy to live with.

While I loved book one of this series, my enjoyment of each subsequent book has dropped gradually. I am still going to continue with The Time Traders series and hope this was simply a brief dip in quality and Norton will return to form. Plus, I bought all the audios and have all the ebooks, so it's not like I can go back now.

[Tomislav · Rating 3 out of 5]

second read - 30 June 2013 - *** I've been re-reading Andre Norton's 1950s series The Time Traders, that I first read when I was 13 or something like that. They are simplistic, of course, but I am enjoying re-experiencing the adventures. I downloaded all four novels from Amazon in kindle format for free.
#1: The Time Traders (1958)
#2: Galactic Derelict (1959)
#3: The Defiant Agents (1962)
#4: Key Out of Time (1963)

Additionally, you could classify this as a Space Western because the hero is Apache and he gets stranded living the life of his ancestors in this Time Traders story.

first read - 1968 - *** I read this book from the library when I was about 13 and enjoyed it.

[Janelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Silly premise for a story, but it was still enjoyable.

[Mark Rabideau · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel is 'pretty' good. The ending seems incomplete and abbreviated. Otherwise it is interesting enough although not of any particular or exceptional 'note'.

[Squeaky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amazingly I did not read this particular book in the series in my youth. Well, finally I did! It was the Project Gutenberg e-book edition, too.
I enjoyed this story. I sense a future romance between Travis Fox and Kaydessa.

[Rob Hopwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Defiant Agents by Andre Norton

In this 1962 novel, Travis Fox, Apache descendant and star of Galactic Derelict, this time pits his wits and physical agility against the Reds (revised in the 2000 edition of The Time Traders to the Russians), the Starmen, and others when he is transported to the distant world of Topaz unconscious and without his explicit consent as part Operation Cochise, a Western move to colonize a planet ahead of the Russians.

Travis and the two animal companions who enjoy a telepathic link with him soon unexpectedly stumble upon another group of settlers who have escaped from the Russian camp and are trying to evade recapture. Travis must strive to overcome the prejudices of his Apache compatriots and those other colonists in an effort to unite them against a common enemy. At the same time, since the planet Topaz was one of those marked on the tapes recovered from the home planet of the ancient Starmen (see the novel Galactic Derelict), Travis also experiences an increasing measure of uneasiness and a feeling that danger worse than anything he can imagine is lying dormant and waiting to strike....

In common with The Time Traders and Galactic Derelict, The Defiant Agents is primarily an action adventure about survival against the odds in harsh environments. There are problems to solve and enemies to eliminate, and there is a central mystery which adds tension and foreboding to the atmosphere. Although it must be said that this novel is somewhat lacking in introspective depth and any greatly profound meaning, it is nevertheless an absorbing and fast-paced story with strong characters and some suitably interesting concepts.


Below are some representative quotations from the text of the book:

One was the goal toward which they had been working feverishly for a full twelve months. To plant a colony across the gulf of space—a successful colony—later to be used as a steppingstone to other worlds....

"When you are dealing with frightened men, you're talking to ears closed to anything but what they want to hear."

“The Apaches have volunteered, and they've been passed by the psychologists and the testers. But they're Americans of today, not tribal nomads of two or three hundred years ago. If you break down some barriers, you might just end up breaking them all."

It all came back to the old basic tenet of the service: the end justified the means. They must use every method and man under their control to make sure that Topaz would remain a western possession, even though that strange planet now swung far beyond the sky which covered both the western and eastern alliances on Terra.

More than a generation earlier mankind had chosen barren desert—the "white sands" of New Mexico—as a testing ground for atomic experiments. Humankind could be barred, warded out of the radiation limits; the natural desert dwellers, four-footed and winged, could not be so controlled.

He was in countless Indian legends as the Shaper or the Trickster, sometimes friend, sometimes enemy. Godling for some tribes, father of all evil for others. In the wealth of tales the coyote, above all other animals, had a firm place.

"To make us more like our ancestors perhaps. It is part of what they told us at the project. To venture into these new worlds requires a different type of man than lives on Terra today. Traits we have forgotten are needed to face the dangers of wild places."

Basically, back on Terra, they had all been among the most progressive of their people—progressive, that is, in the white man's sense of the word.

The planet was on the tapes we brought back from that other world, and so it was known to the others who once rode between star and star as we rode between ranch and town. If they had this world set on a journey tape, it was for a reason; that reason may still be in force."

Kaydessa laughed. "Ah, they are so great, those men of the machines. But they are smaller and weaker when their machines cannot obey them."

The Apache had never been a hot-headed, ride-for-glory fighter like the Cheyenne, the Sioux, and the Comanche of the open plains. He estimated the odds against him, used ambush, trick, and every feature of the countryside as weapon and defense. Fifteen Apache fighting men under Chief Geronimo had kept five thousand American and Mexican troops in the field for a year and had come off victorious for the moment.

Travis settled his back against the spire of rock and raised his right hand into the path of the sun, cradling in his palm a disk of glistening metal. Flash ... flash ... he made the signal pattern just as his ancestors a hundred years earlier and far across space had used trade mirrors to relay war alerts among the Chiricahua and White Mountain ranges.

Men who had been dropped into their racial and ancestral pasts until the present time was less real than the dreams conditioning them had a difficult job evaluating any situation.

At dawn—the old time of attack. An Apache does not attack at night. Travis was not sure that any of them could break that old taboo and creep down upon the camp before the coming of new light.

"Knowledge—weapons, maybe. Can we stand against these machines of the Reds? Yet many of the devices they now use are taken from the star ships they have looted through time. To every weapon there is a defense."

"Take care, younger brother! This is not a lucky business. And remember, if one goes too far down a wrong trail, there is sometimes no returning—"

With a return of that queasy feeling he had known in the tower, Travis knew Manulito was speaking sense. They might have to open Pandora's box before the end of this campaign.

As Buck had pointed out, one's own ideals could well supply reasons for violence. In the past Terra had been racked by wars of religion, one fanatically held opinion opposed to another. There was no righteousness in such struggles, only fatal ends. The Reds had no right to this new knowledge—but neither did they. It must be locked against the meddling of fools and zealots.

[Serena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andre Norton took Travis Fox and ran away with him to another planet, all on his own; when he had been one of three characters, he wasn't very noticeable - but in this setting, all on his own, he clearly stands out and shines. I quite liked the mysteries here, and all the little things that added up to the finish.

[Troy Dye · Rating 5 out of 5]

Defiant Agents by Andre Norton

Fifty year old gold, Science Fiction from a master. Apache and Mongol warriors are transported to an alien planet as slave labor, but with the secrets of a long dead race they unite to fight for freedom.

[Le Kellum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good read.

Andre Norton was the author who awakened my love for reading. Every one of her books is like revisiting an old friend.

[Robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early Bird Books Deal | Let down by too many impossibilities, the story does still grab the attention. | If I'd accidentally read these books out of order and started with this one, I almost certainly would not have continued with the series. There's too much here that's ridiculous. In the short time after the return of the ship from the previous book, the Russians were able to infiltrate the American research in such a way that they could not just match the work being done, but succeed it, regress their own warriors, place them on the target planet, and set up a full-scale planetary defense system that was capable of knocking the arriving American ship out of the sky? And in the time they took to do all that, they didn't either discover the alien technology on the world they occupied prior to the American arrival, or set up a secondary defense against ground invasion? With all that knowledge, a full group of enthralled slaves, and homefield advantage, they could be so easily beaten by about a dozen people, originally archaeologists and MIT grads, just because of some memory regression that placed Apache warrior skills forefront in the minds of their opponents? With just the "trip tapes" brought back from the previous book, the Americans in that short time chose Topaz as their prime target, learned enough about it to decide long-unused Apache skills would be more useful than modern training and technology, recruited volunteers, regressed them, had political upheaval changing who had control over decisions, built the ship, staffed it, found their traitor, and launched the mission? None of this book resembles reality on any level!
And yet, it's an entertaining read, which I kept turning pages in. Disappointed in Fox, I liked him better in the previous book, before he was regressed and went into really weird moral territory. How would the instinctive warrior response killing a man with an automatic weapon be better than the instinctive warrior response killing a man with an alien burner weapon?! If he'd had the other gun in his hand instead of in his sash, it would have been the same. Swing around, squeeze trigger, dead enemy. And the message seemed so muddled. We have to keep this from their hands because they're evil! We take a moment to recognize that it's still evil even in our hands! So we must use the evil to keep it from the other evil! We are aware that if our own people had it, they would be evil with it! So let's kill and destroy with it! Just weird, all around, and yet I kept reading. So Norton clearly had some skill, even if the book is a combination of desperate stretches and leaps in order to justify sci-fi Apaches.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Item #1 of my "Read every book I've been putting off reading" mission for 2021. This book is the third in a series, and I haven't read the first two. So what? I read it anyway, and it stands up just fine. I like Norton (who is Alice Norton, not Andre, if you hadn't heard). She wrote quality Sci-Fi of the 1960s variety (The bad guys are "Reds" in this one).

It's fun pulp stuff: Modern Apache are sent to populate a new world in an East-West rivalry to settle worlds from a now-empty ancient interstellar empire (!) but they've been brainwashed (or something) to have their ancestral skills and attitudes brought back, so Travis Fox, lead Apache, slips between modern space-age archaeologist and long-ago warrior of the American Southwest.

The Russians aren't sitting idly by, of course, so they send Mongols who've undergone the same process, but are also mind-controlled (at times) by their Soviet masters (because of course they are). Maybe the Apache were too, we don't know for sure (but it's likely).

There's a space crash, a couple of awesome, super-intelligent coyotes, and an ancient tribe team-up to defeat the oppressors, yay! Travis also explores ruins of the ancient empire to find weapons and tools (and survivors?) to help his side.

Norton is a cut or three above the average pulp writer though, so Travis faces challenges from his side as well-the good guys aren't all good-at least not all the time. And he finds love or something like it, though he's not above using the object of his affection as bait in a trap.

Occasionally Norton wraps up key plot points as an afterthought rather than by description, possibly to hit a mandated word count. Several major conflicts and rescues happen "off screen" and are described after the fact. It left me wanting more, occasionally, but also kept the plot moving, so perhaps it was Norton's choice to hand-wave when necessary.

All-in-all, it's a fun read with cool ideas, and Norton was certainly ahead of her time in having a dark-skinned, Amerindian hero leading the action, not to mention having nearly every character of consequence be non-white (or a coyote!). If you like Old School sci-fi, it's well worth picking up.

[Jason Bleckly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the 3rd book in the Time Traders series. I read the first two (The Time Traders and Galactic Derelict) back in 2022 as they were the only ones in the series which I had. I’ve now found another couple books in the series.

Officially this is the Ross Murdock Series. It says so on the cover. But the curios thing is Ross does not appear in this book at all. Travis Fox who didn’t turn up until Galactic Derelict is the main star of this book. So this book does continue in the same universe as the previous 2, and Travis does reflect on his previous adventures with Ross

Unlike the previous books there is no actual time travel in this one. It’s set in the present on the planet Topaz. But there is a lot of references to Apache and Mongolian history and culture. Once again it’s a story very much of the Red Peril era, though it was written towards the end of that period. The Russians in the book are literally referred to as the Reds and must be destroyed at all costs.

The story itself is a planetary adventure. The spaceship taking them to Topaz crashlands and the only survivors are Travis, a small band of Apache, and 2 sentient telepathic foxes. The Apaches aren’t real Apaches, they are modern people who have been hypno-trained to believe they are 18th century Apaches. This is done to put them on an even footing with the modern people hypno-trained by the Reds to believe they are 13th century Mongolian Blue Horde. They all have bleed through of their acutal memories and technical skills as needed to move the plot along.

There is also a storehouse of equipment from the lost ancient alien civilisation that provided the technology for both the American and Russian space and time exploration that is the basis for the series.

How much of the Apache and Mongolian history and culture included here is accurate I have no idea. But my limited knowledge found it convincing.

This is not hard SF, it’s Boys Own Adventure SF. And great fun at that. There are lots of plot twists and turns that keep it interesting.

[Tom Britz · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Defiant Agents is the third novel in the Time Trader series by Andre Norton.
The race for the colonization of a new planet, Topaz, has sent Travis Fox and his crew of Apache descendants out to become the unwilling colonists. Even though they were volunteers and willingly training for the mission many months or years down the road, the discovery of a spy has sped the mission to a disastrous early beginning.
The Russians have already begun their own mission to Topaz, so the leaders of the American team has basically drugged and kidnapped the volunteers and sent them out. However the Russians or the ancient aliens, whose technology both powers are using, has placed a satellite around Topaz and it disables the American ship which crashes, killing those in charge leaving the volunteers to awaken on this new world with the added fact that they have been regressed back to their ancient Indian traditions.
They soon find that they do not have the planet to themselves, the Russians have the same technology and their crew have been regressed back to Mongol roots, but the Russian mission did not crash and their leaders have electronic mind control devices to keep the Mongols under their thumb. This is the story of new beginnings and the retaking of personal freedom on a new planet. Can two different cultures learn to trust and work together to forge new bonds and throw off the old bonds? Another rousing adventure from Andre Norton. She is very much overlooked by many, but every novel I've read of hers has been well written and a damn good read.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good second book

I really liked this book but... I was really confused when I first started to read it and much time had passed and not o lynch that but from the sound of it a whole book missing. We leave off of what they will do next and they plan to find more ships in time but certainly to find out a handful of them end up accidentally going to space, visit three planets and have some adventures!!! Now what wasn't this written about? It really did confuse me and I had to stop reading and go back to see if I had missed a book or two. I just don't understand why she would have not written a book about that and instead just moves to much later with them in space and getting ready to land when something happens. It was really confusing and I really like I was missing a lot of knowledge about what was going on. In fact after reading this book which was really good by the way, I still feel that way but then so do the people who survived the landing because they don't k ow how the heck they ended up there either! So kind of need 8 I say it again... confusing, lol.
About the book though it was a really interesting well written story and it was really exciting at times but I think in all book one was such better story. I will take a look at book three and see what it's about, who knows it maybe the missing time between book one and two! 😕

[Raye · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pros: Travis Fox is a strong POV character and I prefer him to Murdock, who I still feel is kind of a dud. I like the idea that space colonies are basically on their own indefinitely because of the challenges inherent in early space travel. As in the previous novel, I enjoy the idea that there was once a galaxy spanning empire that has now fallen, and our protagonists are left with only their ruins and speculations.

Cons: Even with what I see as Norton’s admirable and largely sensitive (for the time) attempt at building a story around non-Anglo Saxon cultures in a time when few writers tried… there’s still just something inherently exoticising and othering about her treatment of both Native American and Mongolian culture. Is it the telepathic mind control machine that makes them believe they’re living in their own cultural past? Maybe. It certainly doesn’t help. Another con is the ongoing struggle with the Russians. Cold War era tropes of this type leave me, dare I say, cold.

Neither pro nor con: there are telepathic mutant coyotes. If you told me when I started Time Traders that this series was going to end in telepathic mutant coyotes in space I would have slapped your face, but here we are.

[Helen · Rating 2 out of 5]

First things first. The idea that to colonize a planet one needs to send people with "savage" ancestry, here Apaches and Mongols, is pretty damn racist. The whole "Reds vs Westerners", "Russians vs Americans" thing, it's disheartening to think that a science fiction author at the time would imagine that would still be relevant in the future where we're colonizing new planets. Much of the action happens "off screen" and we're merely told about it, which makes the whole thing less exciting.

Not one of Norton's finest.

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

My sisters were huge fans of Andre Norton as teenagers. I didn't read any Andre Norton until the last year or two. For me, it's been hit or miss. This one was a miss. This one was really hard to get my attention - the story was just too weird, IMHO. Maybe if I had read book 2, I would have had a different result (wasn't available in audiobook). I really loved Time Traders book 1, so I was disappointed that this didn't keep my interest.

[Howard Brazee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hadn't read this in 6 decades. The story has the U.S. with Apaches with racial memories and the Soviets having Mongols with racial memories on a planet that they reached with alien space ships they got from the far past. It doesn't make sense why they wanted them nor why they won't later colonize with modern people. But it was an excuse to have those people working together in a SF setting.

[Paul, · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book to read while stuck in hospital. The premises are a bit dumb, but the writing is pretty good. Very 60s sci-fi. I didn't know this was the third book in a series. It might have made a bit more sense if I read the other two first. I appreciated the underlying idea that jumping to high technology (or any form of power) quickly becomes a curse, not because of the technology, but because of the nature of humanity.

[Hazel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this novel the world and characters are evocative.

As a non-native I feel like the author did a good job portraying the native Americans. They were portrayed neither as savages nor as noble savages. They were not a monolith will all the same faults and values. I feel like the author did a good job of portraying them as people and not stereotypes.

I'd be really interested to know how apache or even other native readers feel about this book.

[Alicia Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Defiant Agents; a pleasure to own again!

This is the 3rd or 4th copy of this book to grace our bookcase and I have enjoyed reading it on at least two continents. An easy read of a well written story with the hero displaying the best traits of the various American Indians I have known, served with in the military, and am still proud to call "Friend"!

[Matthew · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is unfortunately a product of its time, with the driving premise focused on "racial memories", against the backdrop of the Cold War stretching into space. With the sci-fi element being light and just serving as the backdrop, the entire book needs the reader to buy into several massive stereotypes. Just cannot recommend this in any way.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andre Norton was my favorite author back in the 70s. Has it really been that long?
Two countries on Earth want control of the same planet because of some alien technology there. The odds are against Ross and his team from the moment they enter orbit.

[Rain · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this as part of an omnibus collection, and didnt realise it was part of a series until I finished it. It stands alone well enough, for light-weight old-school sci-fi...I would have given it 2 stars... but hey? It gets an extra star for being Andre Norton.

[Michael R. Knowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Classic Andre Norton

I grew up reading the witch world series, and this a pleasant nostalgia piece...using familiar themes..substituting life sci-fy for fantasy explanation. Not overly challenging and a little predictable but a nice afternoons diversion