It's half a book. Ends abruptly and anticlimactically. Oh well.
( )

Not a bad story....just a bit dated as a re-issue of M.Z.Bradley's first novel from 1961. A mixed-species planet with many plots against humans--but has secret teleportation. It was probably a pretty good story when first published, but a bit stodgy for today. The hero has a vendetta for his old partner, but is forced by the Terran government to find & bring in said partner and it turns out that there are circumstances etc. and women--of various humanoid persuasions--that influence the plot. Today I would qualify this as a YA level story. ( )

Fun, pulp science fiction. ( )

I liked this book, even as it shows its age of more than half a century and the plot itself isn't the most innovative.

Wolf, the planet where the protagonist goes on his hunt for his niece and her father, has an abundance of characteristics that readers will remember for MZB's Darkover series. Darkover, on the other hand, is mentioned as a different world. This mismatch may seem jarring for readers who are acquainted with her work.

I consider this novel as something we rarely see in an author's work: a snapshot from right in the middle of the worldbuilding process. Many elements we see here in their raw form will appear later in another context, and I'd really like to know more about the thought process that evolved Wolf into the famous Darkover in the end. ( )

This early MZB is more interesting for its insights into the origins of parts of Darkover than for the story itself. Even the name Darkover is in this book, and the beginnings of the Dry Towns. Other phrases and species are also there, but they are not what they would become in the Darkover novels. She hasn't quite got it yet, but the first signs are there. ( )