Andre Norton 2 hr 22 min read

On Nahuatl, under two racing moons, Ras Hume pauses among scented spike-flowers and thinks of serpents, for on this world and a dozen others, the crime lord Wass is the serpent.

Andre Norton's 1961 novel is a taut adventure and space opera of a dangerous scheme on a jungle world. Sharp, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for classic Norton, a space-hunter drawn into a criminal plot involving a faked survivor and a deadly game on a wild frontier planet.

In its time

Published in 1961, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

2 hr 22 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).