This book, Storm Over Warlock, is from back in the day, in the 70’s. It had a female sci-fi fantasy author named Andre Norton. My Kajukenbo teacher from back in the day was stoked to hear I was digging her book, since he thought her books had been lost in time. Just from a glance at the title and the cover, I was pretty sure this book would rule.
The bright side of reading this was that it was a quick read at 200 pages and pocket lunch book size. It definitely kept me turning the pages. The best thing is that there really are no good guys, just a bunch of aggressive alien surveyors and locals. Think of the Dark Crystal crossed with Conan the Barbarian and Aliens and you start tio get the picture. Very heavy on the fantasy, with little in the way of hard sci-fi, this book certainly takes your mind off of things. Maybe you got tired of US hurricane coverage and should take a break from that and read about Storm Over Warlock instead.
There’s much talk of skull mountain, many offerings of green potions, but the dialogue isn’t that great, and some of the writing is a bit obtuse. Nevertheless this book is great at painting pictures and landscapes which take you away in escapism. There are some fairly shallow efforts to get into cultural anthropology, but good enough overall to say this book was slightly above average overall, and just basically kicks ass cause its about alien warlocks. I have a rule that anything about alien warlocks will always get a good review from me, until the day I die. Alien warlocks need to stick together. That said, this book coulda been better.