Andre Norton, Three Hands for Scorpio

Three Hands for Scorpio By Andre Norton

Princess triplets Drucilla, Sabina, and Tamara of the House of Skorpys share a telepathic connection that has made the three siblings best friends. Their homeland is constantly under threat and assault by feral neighbours wanting to destroy their father the Earl. Especially troublesome is the constant raids from Gurlyon, which this time includes the abduction of the trio.

With Skorpys in pursuit to reach his daughter, their abductors decide to dump the women in order to foster their escape. However, they don't discard the females anywhere; they thrust the women inside the Dismals, a deadly underground world filled with dangerous strange creatures and oddly, a large forest. Rather then fold, Drucilla, Sabrina, and Tamara begin their trek out of these badlands starting by allying with a ferocious feline creature, the Climber and next with a human hermit Zolan, who insists there is no way out of the Dismals and that he communicates with the spirits of the former lost tribes that once resided in this wasteland. While the ladies struggle to survive, their home is under siege by a malevolence that once ran rampant in the Dismals.

Though triplets sharing so much in common, the three females come across as unique individuals with diverse tastes due to Andre Norton rotating the narration enabling the audience to see the same event from differing perspectives. The story line is action-packed with the alternate Dismal underground realm an interesting locale though the connection to Skorpys is not clear until very late in the tale. Fans of strong female fantasy characters will gain immense pleasure from THREE HANDS FOR SCORPIO as Andre Norton remains the Grand Dame of fantasy.

Harriet Klausner