Andre Norton: The Gate of the Cat

Andre Norton's The Gate of the Cat is subtitled "Return to Witch World." It also serves as an entry point for new readers, such as yours truly, who picked it up off a hotel lobby shelf alongside a cruelly deceptive The Mote in God's Eye which lacked the first 162 pages (not even a chapter break!). The pace is fast, and the initial impression is that of an apocalyptic landscape akin to Return to Oz and many other iterations and adaptations of the Oz franchise. As a new reader, it is clear that the world is worse off than before, but also unknown how apocalyptic the world was prior to the witches reshaping the world. Our heroine, Kelsie MacBlair, a hunter with principles, arrives in Witch World via the standard standing stones method. Although some might find the brief inability to communicate fast tracked by telepathy cliched, the acknowledgement that the inhabitants of the world of adventure are not speaking English is welcome, It may be too much to ask for more than one language. The narrative has a quick pace and too many species to introduce, so sometimes it feels more like an "World of Witch World" encyclopedia in narrative form. Even there, a bit more exposition of the names of species and places would have helped. The conceit of Witch World is "lost knowledge of the Old Ones," so perhaps some of these lack their true names, but the books established to exist in this world must call them something! The prose is plain and economical, urging the reader on rather than encouraging lingering. The Gate of Cat is clearly the beginning of a new cycle of adventure, since it introduces a new outside protagonist while also providing a fully resolved plot in case it is the only book of the cycle, but it would be better, if this were one's first exposure to Witch World and if one liked it, to start at the beginning.