James Nicoll Reviews

1974’s The Hounds of Skaith is the second volume in Leigh Brackett’s Ginger Star trilogy.

Having rescued his adopted father Ashton and humiliated Skaith’s Lords Protector, Eric John Stark faces another challenge: surviving the consequences of his actions.

Skaith! A dying planet orbiting a slowly dimming star, its people have long ago accepted that all they could do is delay their extinction, not end it. Therefore, the Lords Protector and their army of wandsmen have done their best to manage a long, slow decline.

The Galactic Union’s¹ starships arrival upended that. Escape is possible. To the traditionalists of Skaith, this is unacceptable. To flee would be to make a mockery of the sacrifices of the past. Also, it would involve embracing change, something the Lords Protector are loath to do.

Ashton’s rescue — or rather, that Stark invaded and burned the Lords Protector’s citadel in the process of rescuing Ashton — sparked a planetary crisis. This affront was intolerable. Therefore, the starmen must leave Skaith forever, allowing the planet to forget the stars and embrace its ordained destiny.

Stark therefore has a limited time in which to escape Skaith. If he and Ashton cannot reach the starport at Skeg before the ships leave, they may be marooned on Skaith forever. Between their current location and Skeg lies a vast wilderness filled with warriors, wandering cannibals, and worse.

Stark’s coming to Skaith and his defeat of the Citadel were foretold in a seer’s prophecy. However, now that he has completed his foreordained role, the prophecy no longer protects him. Is Stark now just another man, as easy to kill as any other? Skaith’s rulers intend to find out.

~oOo~

The Hounds of Skaith may be the second book in a trilogy, but it is a product of an older time when each volume had to stand on its own. No guarantee that readers would find the books in order (or the earlier books at all). This can be read as a stand-alone, although I would recommend tracking down the first book, The Ginger Star.

I have used the Ballentine Books edition cover. However, many people who were slow about returning their SFBC order cards would have had the omnibus with this cover:

As you know, Bob, Stark began his adventures in an Olde Tyme Solar System in which the inner planets — even Mercury — were habitable. Science having marched on, Brackett relocated Stark’s adventures to another solar system… despite which Stark’s childhood, raised by so-called aboes on Mercury, was not only unchanged but highlighted.

If you want to pretend that Brackett’s astronomy is not hopelessly dated, pretend the Ginger Star is a brown dwarf that’s slowly cooling. That or a cooling white dwarf.

When I first read this book, I either missed or later forgot this bit re the setting on Skaith:

Then and later, when some stability was reestablished, the Lords Protector were to prevent a too great trampling of the weak by the strong. Their law was simple: Succor the weak, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless-striving always toward the greatest good of the greatest number.

It appears that through the centuries this law has been carried far beyond its original intent. The Farers and the many smaller nonproductive fragments of this thoroughly fragmented culture are now the greater number, with the result that the wandsmen, in the name of the Lords Protector, hold a third or more of the population in virtual slavery, to supply the rest. 

Which is to say, a dying star is bad, but Skaith’s real problem is an army of welfare bums enabled by misguided do-gooders.

This may seem at least a little odd, because Stark’s whole schtick is fighting on behalf of the oppressed, raised as he was by Mercurians who were brutally murdered by Earthmen greedy for Mercury’s riches. However, everyone he helps is willing to struggle for themselves. They jus need a helping hand from time to time. The moral here is clearly Vote Nixon!

Stark’s adventures are fairly straightforward. He needs to get from A to B. There are many impediments. Some of these he will win over to his side; facilitating escape from a dying world is a huge asset when it comes to collecting allies. Other impediments will just have to be killed. Luckily for Stark, he’s astonishing good at killing people in a variety of ways, and even more adept at not dying himself.

If that is the sort of thing you’re looking for, then this is the book for you.

The Hounds of Skaith is available here (Paizo), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Bookshop US), here (Bookshop UK), here (Kobo), here (Words Worth Books).

I did not find The Hounds of Skaith at Chapters. Oddly, I also didn’t find it at Arc Manor, despite the Arc Manor edition being the one most often offered by booksellers.

On that note, I did check to see if I was inadvertently steering people to Baen, as they did offer The Hounds of Skaith at one time. They don’t appear to. In fact, their list of authors with works available from Baen looks much shorter than I remember it.

1: Interesting detail: the Galactic Union was not founded by Terrans. To quote, the Union is

the interstellar civilization that spread across half the Milky Way from its center at Pax, chief world of Vega. The Galactic Union had even embraced the distant little world of Sol. 

However, it does seem to be a human civilization. Either humans were spread across the galaxy long ago or humans just naturally evolve independently on planet after planet.