Beyond his fine characterization and rich use of language is his delightful inventiveness: the plot twistings and turnings, disguises, powers of mind explained and made plausible, galactic spaciousness with everything from pirates to some of the weirdest aliens ever - what a wild and glorious ride this novel is.
Reading him is a joy, re-reading is quite as good, and I've read The Witches of Karres enough times to lose count. Schmitz is a superbly subtle stylist, and a superb delineator of character: one of the best of either talent ever to have written science fiction.
Since the girls are proving to be more firecrackers in hand than assistants, the merchants are eager to re-sell them to anyone ignorant enough to take them.Ĭaptain Pausert daren't return to his rather moral and stuffy home planet with three little slave girls, whatever his excuse, so he realizes he'll first have to return them to their home world, Karres. The girls are Maleen, Goth, and the Leewit: aged respectively about fourteen, ten, and six. One after another, Pausert rescues three young sisters who were captured in a slaving raid while adventuring and had just been sold to three merchants on Porlumma. Porlumma is a minor Imperial planet, not a very savory place for non-citizens of the Empire. It was just plain fate, so far as he could see. It was around the hub of the evening on the planet of Porlumma when Captain Pausert, commercial traveler from the Republic of Nikkeldepain, met the first of the witches of Karres. It's grand science fiction: the "witches" of the title are natives of the elusive planet Karres - men, women, and children - their witchcraft being exotic mental powers of various kinds and degrees. Schmitz is one of my all-time favorite novels. One of the very best novels, of any kind, ever. Astounding Science Fiction, December 1949
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