| View Larger Image | Plague Ship | Paperbackby Andre Norton (Author)
| List Price: | $8.99 | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | CruGuru | | Page Count: | 144 Pages | | Publication Date: | September 19, 2008 | | Sales Rank: | 922,028nd |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
The tramp-freighter spaceship Solar Queen had exclusive trading rights to Sargol and its fabulous gems. But the crew's bravery and resourcefulness strained to the breaking point as they met Sargol's three challenges: the enigmatic obstinacy of the planet's catlike natives, ruthless incursions of an illegal competitor, and worst of all -- an invisible, undetectable stowaway whose presence branded the Solar Queen a plague ship . . . off limits to the rest of the galaxy! |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 8 reviews)
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Not My Cup Of Tea by Mary Ellison (USA)  3 Stars
July 30, 2009
A crew of interstellar traders complete a trading mission and shortly after they start their return journey to earth members of the crew become ill with an unknown aliment that leaves them incapacitated. The ship is quickly labeled a plague ship and warned off as it approaches the Terran system. Those members of the crew who are unaffected must care for the ill, discover the source, and somehow convince authorities that they are not carrying a plague.
The book was filled with a lot of descriptive material and very little action, and I found the writing style a little difficult to deal with. In fact, I almost gave it up after the 5th chapter, but I didn't. I struggled through, but was left with a ho-hum feeling by the time I reached the end. Still I give it 3-stars because, while it didn't excite me, it wasn't really a bad book.
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The second 'Solar Queen' adventure by E. A. Lovitt (Gladwin, MI USA)  5 Stars
July 08, 2009
"Plague Ship" (1956) is the second 'Solar Queen' adventure, and sequel to "Sargasso of Space." Norton's four-book series about the trader-crew of the Solar Queen ended in 1969 with "Postmarked the Stars" but beware! Lesser authors have butted into the series, presumably with Norton's permission since this remarkable Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy and Nebula Grand Master just recently passed away on March 17, 2005 after a long and extremely fruitful career (her first novel was published in 1934, her latest fantasy in 2005).
One Solar Queen rip-off to avoid at all costs is "Redline: the Stars."
Norton's Solar Queen stories are told from the viewpoint of Dane Thorson, an apprentice-Cargo Master who is introduced in "Sargasso of Space," the first Solar Queen novel, as a "lanky, very young man in an ill-fitting Trader's tunic." Most of this author's heroes and heroines are young, uncertain of themselves, shy, with a tendency to trip over their own enthusiasms and load themselves up with guilt at the slightest opportunity. They are very likeable and their adventures are narrated in remarkably lean prose with just the right touch of description.
After ten years of schooling, orphan Dane Thorson is assigned via a computer analysis of his psychological profile--not to a safe berth on a sleek Company-run starship that his classmates were vying for--but to a battered tramp of a Free Trader. To say that the 'Solar Queen' "lacked a great many refinements and luxurious fittings which the Company ships boasted" was an understatement. But she was a tightly-run ship and what she lacked in refinement, she made up for in adventure. Dane soon settles in under Cargo Master Van Rycke and learns "to his dismay what large gaps unfortunately existed in his training."
Sometimes I just want to give Dane a big hug.
"Plague Ship" takes the crew of the 'Solar Queen' to Sargol, where the enigmatic feline natives seem very reluctant to trade away their fabulous scented gemstones. When Dane Thorson discovers an herb that the Salariki are willing to swap for their gems, he fears that his eagerness to make a trade breakthrough might have poisoned a native child. That becomes the least of his worries when the 'Solar Queen' blasts off from Sargol with invisible, undetectable stowaways that would brand the free traders anathema to all inhabited worlds.
In space, the more senior members of the Solar Queen's crew succumb to a strange plague that resembles sleeping sickness. Dane and his fellow-apprentices, with the assistance of Captain Jellico's Hoobat (a sort of blue parrot-lizard, or at least that's how I've always pictured it) discover the source of the plague: venomous hitch-hikers from Sargol. "It walked erect on two threads of legs...a bulging abdomen sheathed in the horny substance of a beetle's shell ended in a sharp point." It was only about a foot-and-a-half high and could change color like a chameleon.
The Hoobat kills and eats the first creature, and then the hunt is on for others of its kind.
Even with the source of the sleeping sickness discovered, the Solar Queen's young apprentices must still convince the rest of the galaxy that they are not a plague ship--and therefore eligible to be destroyed on sight without warning.
The Solar Queen novels are prime representatives of Norton's lean action-packed brand of story-telling (at least the ones she solo-authored.) If you haven't read them since you were a teen-ager, I urge you to try them again. For a few pleasant hours, you will be immersed in the adventures of a likeable, feisty band of free traders on exotic, carefully-drawn alien worlds.
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Free SF Reader by Blue Tyson  4 Stars
September 03, 2007
The second of the adventures of scruffy young merchant traveller Dane Thorsen. An expedition to another planet is also anything but routine, as the locals are hard to deal with, and the consequences of leaving, are worse.
Aliens and other problems lead the outside to believe that their ship is a disease carrier. This is not good as it might mean destruction.
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Second 'Solar Queen' novel by E. A. Lovitt (Gladwin, MI USA) 5 Stars
June 21, 2007
"Plague Ship" (1956) is the second 'Solar Queen' adventure, and sequel to "Sargasso of Space." Norton's four-book series about the trader-crew of the Solar Queen ended in 1969 with "Postmarked the Stars" but beware! Lesser authors have butted into the series, presumably with Norton's permission since this remarkable Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy and Nebula Grand Master just recently passed away on March 17, 2005 after a long and extremely fruitful career (her first novel was published in 1934, her latest fantasy in 2005).
One Solar Queen rip-off to avoid at all costs is "Redline: the Stars."
Norton's Solar Queen stories are told from the viewpoint of Dane Thorson, an apprentice-Cargo Master who is introduced in "Sargasso of Space," the first Solar Queen novel, as a "lanky, very young man in an ill-fitting Trader's tunic." Most of this author's heroes and heroines are young, uncertain of themselves, shy, with a tendency to trip over their own enthusiasms and load themselves up with guilt at the slightest opportunity. They are very likeable and their adventures are narrated in remarkably lean prose with just the right touch of description.
After ten years of schooling, orphan Dane Thorson is assigned via a computer analysis of his psychological profile--not to a safe berth on a sleek Company-run starship that his classmates were vying for--but to a battered tramp of a Free Trader. To say that the 'Solar Queen' "lacked a great many refinements and luxurious fittings which the Company ships boasted" was an understatement. But she was a tightly-run ship and what she lacked in refinement, she made up for in adventure. Dane soon settles in under Cargo Master Van Rycke and learns "to his dismay what large gaps unfortunately existed in his training."
Sometimes I just want to give Dane a big hug.
"Plague Ship" takes the crew of the 'Solar Queen' to Sargol, where the enigmatic feline natives seem very reluctant to trade away their fabulous scented gemstones. When Dane Thorson discovers an herb that the Salariki are willing to swap for their gems, he fears that his eagerness to make a trade breakthrough might have poisoned a native child. That becomes the least of his worries when the 'Solar Queen' blasts off from Sargol with invisible, undetectable stowaways that would brand the free traders anathema to all inhabited worlds.
In space, the more senior members of the Solar Queen's crew succumb to a strange plague that resembles sleeping sickness. Dane and his fellow-apprentices, with the assistance of Captain Jellico's Hoobat (a sort of blue parrot-lizard, or at least that's how I've always pictured it) discover the source of the plague: venomous hitch-hikers from Sargol. "It walked erect on two threads of legs...a bulging abdomen sheathed in the horny substance of a beetle's shell ended in a sharp point." It was only about a foot-and-a-half high and could change color like a chameleon.
The Hoobat kills and eats the first creature, and then the hunt is on for others of its kind.
Even with the source of the sleeping sickness discovered, the Solar Queen's young apprentices must still convince the rest of the galaxy that they are not a plague ship--and therefore eligible to be destroyed on sight without warning.
The Solar Queen novels are prime representatives of Norton's lean action-packed brand of story-telling (at least the ones she solo-authored.) If you haven't read them since you were a teen-ager, I urge you to try them again. For a few pleasant hours, you will be immersed in the adventures of a likeable, feisty band of free traders on exotic, carefully-drawn alien worlds.
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Second 'Solar Queen' adventure by E. A. Lovitt (Gladwin, MI USA) 5 Stars
March 15, 2006
"Plague Ship" (1956) is the second 'Solar Queen' adventure, and sequel to "Sargasso of Space." Norton's four-book series about the trader-crew of the Solar Queen ended in 1969 with "Postmarked the Stars" but beware! Lesser authors have butted into the series, presumably with Norton's permission since this remarkable Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy and Nebula Grand Master just recently passed away on March 17, 2005 after a long and extremely fruitful career (her first novel was published in 1934, her latest fantasy in 2005).
One Solar Queen rip-off to avoid at all costs is "Redline: the Stars."
Norton's Solar Queen stories are told from the viewpoint of Dane Thorson, an apprentice-Cargo Master who is introduced in "Sargasso of Space," the first Solar Queen novel, as a "lanky, very young man in an ill-fitting Trader's tunic." Most of this author's heroes and heroines are young, uncertain of themselves, shy, with a tendency to trip over their own enthusiasms and load themselves up with guilt at the slightest opportunity. They are very likeable and their adventures are narrated in remarkably lean prose with just the right touch of description.
After ten years of schooling, orphan Dane Thorson is assigned via a computer analysis of his psychological profile--not to a safe berth on a sleek Company-run starship that his classmates were vying for--but to a battered tramp of a Free Trader. To say that the 'Solar Queen' "lacked a great many refinements and luxurious fittings which the Company ships boasted" was an understatement. But she was a tightly-run ship and what she lacked in refinement, she made up for in adventure. Dane soon settles in under Cargo Master Van Rycke and learns "to his dismay what large gaps unfortunately existed in his training."
Sometimes I just want to give Dane a big hug.
"Plague Ship" takes the crew of the 'Solar Queen' to Sargol, where the enigmatic feline natives seem very reluctant to trade away their fabulous scented gemstones. When Dane Thorson discovers an herb that the Salariki are willing to swap for their gems, he fears that his eagerness to make a trade breakthrough might have poisoned a native child. That becomes the least of his worries when the 'Solar Queen' blasts off from Sargol with invisible, undetectable stowaways that would brand the free traders anathema to all inhabited worlds.
In space, the more senior members of the Solar Queen's crew succumb to a strange plague that resembles sleeping sickness. Dane and his fellow-apprentices, with the assistance of Captain Jellico's Hoobat (a sort of blue parrot-lizard, or at least that's how I've always pictured it) discover the source of the plague: venomous hitch-hikers from Sargol. "It walked erect on two threads of legs...a bulging abdomen sheathed in the horny substance of a beetle's shell ended in a sharp point." It was only about a foot-and-a-half high and could change color like a chameleon.
The Hoobat kills and eats the first creature, and then the hunt is on for others of its kind.
Even with the source of the sleeping sickness discovered, the Solar Queen's young apprentices must still convince the rest of the galaxy that they are not a plague ship--and therefore eligible to be destroyed on sight without warning.
The Solar Queen novels are prime representatives of Norton's lean action-packed brand of story-telling (at least the ones she solo-authored.) If you haven't read them since you were a teen-ager, I urge you to try them again. For a few pleasant hours, you will be immersed in the adventures of a likeable, feisty band of free traders on exotic, carefully-drawn alien worlds.
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SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| The Solar Queen
by Andre Norton (Author)
The first two star-spanning tales of Dane Thorson and the Solar Queen
Almost half a century ago Andre Norton introduced apprentice Cargo Master Dane Thorson in Sargasso of Space and Plague Ship.
Dane signed on with the independent cargo ship Solar Queen looking for a career in off-world trade. In Sargasso of Space, the Solar Queen free-traders win exclusive rights to trade with the planet Limbo, but the crew arrives to find most of its surface charred, with little sign of life. ...
| | | Postmarked the Stars (Solar Queen, Bk. 4)
by Andre Norton (Author)
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| A Mind for Trade: A Great New Solar Queen Adventure (A solar queen adventure)
by Andre Norton (Author), Sherwood Smith (Author)
The new novel in the popular "Solar Queen" series. Hesprid IV can't be that bad. Especially when it holds such a huge deposit of lucrative cielanite ore. Or so thinks Dane Thorson and the rest of the crew of the "Solar Queen", and its new sister ship, the recently recovered derelict "North Star". The plan seems simple--make landfall, mine ore, leave. Too bad things are never as easy as they appear.
| | | Redline the Stars
by Andre Norton (Author), P. M. Griffin (Author)
The crew of the Solar Queen must face a plague of rats that threatens to decimate the ranks of the visiting spacefarers and Rael Cofort, the half-sister of their rival.
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| Sargasso of Space (Solar Queen, Bk. 1)
by Andre Norton (Author)
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