The Gifts of Asti

By Andre Norton

Andre Norton's science fiction classic depicts the struggles of the last remaining priestess to a powerful-yet-aloof deity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilder Publications, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781627556736

Andre Norton

For well over a half century, Andre Norton was one of the most popular science fiction and fantasy authors in the world. Since her first SF novels were published in the 1940s, her adventure SF has enthralled readers young and old. With series such as Time Traders, Solar Queen, Forerunner, Beast Master, Crosstime, and Janus, as well as many stand-alone novels, her tales of action and adventure throughout the galaxy have drawn countless readers to science fiction. Her fantasy, including the best-selling Witch World series, her "Magic" series, and many other unrelated novels, has been popular with readers for decades. Lauded as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America, she is the recipient of a Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention. Not only have her books been enormously popular; she also has inspired several generations of SF and fantasy writers, especially many talented women writers who have followed in her footsteps. In the past two decades she worked with other writers on a number of novels. Most notable among these were collaborations with Mercedes Lackey, the Halfblood Chronicles, as well as collaborations with A.C. Crispin (in the Witch World series) and Sherwood Smith (in the Time Traders and Solar Queen series). Andre Norton passed away in 2005.

Book preview

The Gifts of Asti

By Andre Norton

Wilder Publications

Copyright © 2014

Cover Imgage © Can Stock Photo Inc. / zerominusone

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

Manufactured in the United States of America

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ISBN 978-1-62755-673-6

Even here, on the black terrace before the forgotten mountain retreat of Asti, it was possible to smell the dank stench of burning Memphir, to imagine that the dawn wind bore upward from the pillaged city the faint tortured cries of those whom the barbarians of Klem hunted to their prolonged death. Indeed it was time to leave—

Varta, last of the virgin Maidens of Asti, shivered. The scaled and wattled creature who crouched beside her thigh turned his reptilian head so that golden eyes met the aquamarine ones set slantingly at a faintly provocative angle in her smooth ivory face.

We go—?

She nodded in answer to that unvoiced question Lur had sent into her brain, and turned toward the dark cavern which was the mouth of Asti’s last dwelling place. Once, more than a thousand years before when the walls of Memphir were young, Asti had lived among men below. But in the richness and softness which was trading Memphir, empire of empires, Asti found no place. So He and those who served Him had withdrawn to this mountain outcrop. And she, Varta, was the last, the very last to bow knee at Asti’s shrine and raise her voice in the dawn hymn—for Lur, as were all his race, was mute.

Even the loot of Memphir would not sate the shaggy headed

Reviews for The Gifts of Asti

[laurablough · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was hoping that this would be the pre-cursor to a series. I want to know more!

[jjmcgaffey · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Well...a rather silly short story, very much in the Norton mold. Magic, or lost science, as a religion; barbarians at the gate, alien ally, man from the past, long-lost colony, and a potential romance - all stuffed into 28 pages, with little exploration of who or why, just events piling on events. It ends just as they need to begin interacting as people and not symbols (and I wonder what he thinks of her "crown"...). Not terrible, but there's not much there.

[ogrezed · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A quick, easy read and a solid story. Just nothing that got me excited about the story or the characters.