RI September 2024

For some reason, I only have one book for September.  I believe that
I probably read the second Dray Prescott I reviewed last time in September
and wanted to keep it together with the one from August, and started the book
I am still reading in September as well, but still a very short count.

I'll throw in a bonus to make up for it a bit.

As usual, the links are Amazon affiliate links which could in theory
earn me something.

==

Drums of War (Ard's Oath Book 4)
by Bruce Sentar
https://amzn.to/3ZTcRtB

This book sees young (I believe he may still be 18, though possibly
19 by now) "Four Sphere Mage" Ard moving closer to the key action
of his setting.  After spending most of the last book in a remote
port city (albeit one which was a surprise invasion point in the
ongoing war) Ard, his battle harem (which now includes an official
mage wife as well as his "anchors", his mother and his newly met
paternal kin from the so far non-aligned third country in the area
return to the Capital.  Once their the brewing fight with the royal
family comes to a head as Ard's mother is forced to fight the First
Princess to keep the non-royal faction in control of the mage council
after the death of an elder mage (whom most everyone believes, correctly,
was killed by the First Princess).  Relations with the King were already
fraught, and unsurprisingly Ard's clan killing his daughter does not
improve matters.  Unready for a bloody civil war in the midst of an
actual, not-going-that-well foreign war, Ard elects to move quickly to
take his group off to the fort they were destined for anyway and join
his mage mentor and her anchors and actually start contributing to
the war effort.  Unfortunately the enemy has mastered the zombie apocalypse,
more or less, and the fort is overrun, and Ard's kingdom has much bigger
problems than internal conflicts..

Happening at the same time, and more or less unknown to Ard, his patron
(she would deny it) goddess is starting to figure out why the gods are
sticking around on this unimportant world (they seem to be from several
Earth pantheons, but the world is not Earth), and making alliances.

In this book Ard accepts that as a Four Sphere Mage there will
always be some crisis he is dealing with, and if he waits to start
a family as he had planned (he has ongoing issues about being
orphaned, and doesn't want that for any child of his) he never will.
That becomes the focus of the longest sex scene here (there are
actually not that many for a harem book), which came across to me
as a bit fetish-y, but his relations with the other harem members
(except the crazy one) are more straight-forward, and his childhood
sweetheart remains the key player and is able to let the air out
of his tires when necessary.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the leveling-up Ard is doing.
His patron has said he won't become a god, but she's not infallible (and
apparently started as a mortal herself).  Sentar is doing a pretty good
job of not making Ard invincible, and I would not like that to stop.

All in all, a pretty good outing, though I would have wished Ard
to the war sooner (we get a number of teases of the situation with
his mentor), and I'm still onboard.

Under The Green Star
by Lin Carter
https://amzn.to/4dFy5y6

At one time DAW had three ongoing ERB Planetary Romance series: Dray Prescott
on Kregan, Tarl Cabbot on Gor (albeit those started with Ballantine) and
Lin Carter's Green Star series.

You'll notice I don't say "X on the world of the green star", because
quite frankly I can't recall the guy's name, if it was ever given in
the first person narrative, and its certainly not the one he used during
his adventure.

Our hero is a house-bound cripple, though a very rich and comfortable
one, and his money and affliction have given him the time & inclination
to study mystic lore.  In particular he has learned meditation
techniques from a (thought) long lost Tibetian tome, and in an opening
recalling Merrit's _Ship Of Ishtar_ as much as John Carter's
cave-bound soul-flight to Barsoom, one night he actually astrally
projects from his body, and instead of wandering the Earth, answers
a mystic call from a beckoning Green Star...

Arriving on that distant pulp-Venus-like world, he enters the body of
a legendary hero lying (for some reason) in apparent suspended animation,
and his "awakening" is taken as a local miracle.  Carefully hiding (as
much as possible) his total ignorance about the world he has arrived at
and the ongoing political situation, he attempts to make a place for
himself (it doesn't hurt that he's a revered hero, of course) and that
includes something he never had on Earth: love.  Of course in Planetary
Romances, acquiring a love-at-first-sight local girlfriend is de rigueur.
John Carter most famously had Deja Thoris, Dray Prescott had Delia of
Delphond, Tarl Cabbot had Talena (though rather uniquely, he got over her!),
and our hero here has Niamh, a heroine who frankly is a bit disturbing as
a love object:

How can I describe her as I first saw her, enthroned in her
golden chair under that immense dome of dim and luminous
ruby? Words, I think, fail and falter before the task of
describing such utter perfection of feminine beauty.

She was young, a girl, a mere child: she looked perhaps
fourteen when I saw her first in the Great Hall of Phaolon.
Slim and graceful as a dancing girl, with her slight,
tip-tilted breasts and long, slender legs, she had the
coltish grace of an adolescent which contrasted with her
regal, queenly dignity.

She wore robes of dull, heavy plush--plush with a shimmering
silvery nap--plush the dim hue of damask roses. A scooping
neckline exposed the upper slopes of her shallow, adolescent
breasts, laid bare her slim shoulders and the fragility of
her slender throat. All of her upper bosom was the creamy
hue of old mellow ivory.

The bodice of her gown fitted her like a second skin, and
clung seductively to the slender waist and smooth, boyish
hips of Niamh. But from her girdle, slung low about her
hips in the style of the Renaissance, the rose plush skirts
of the gown swelled out like the open petals of some soft,
lovely flower. This gown was slit up the sides, demurely
revealing the silken loveliness of her soft, smooth long
legs, naked to the upper thigh, and from beneath the hem
of this gown could be glimpsed the tiny, exquisite foot of
a Mandarin princess, shod in slippers of golden filigree.

From heavy, belting puffed sleeves, her slim arms extended,
bare and unadorned. In all that splendid company, Niamh
alone wore no gems at breast or throat, lobe or brow or
fingers. She had no need of the frozen mineral fire to add
luster or brilliance to her loveliness.

Her face was fine-boned, heart-shaped, exquisite. Beneath
delicately arched brows, her eyes were enormous wells of
depthless amber flame wherein flakes of gold fire trembled.
Thick jetty lashes enshadowed the dark flame of her eyes,
but her hair, elaborately teased and twisted and coiffed,
was startlingly white: a fantastic confection of frosted
sugar, an exquisite construction of spun silver.
 
Her mouth was a luscious rosebud, daintily pink, moistly
seductive.

A delicate flower of superb and breathtaking loveliness was
Niamh the Fair, when first I looked upon her there on the
gilt throne, bathed in shafts of somber and ruby light from
the hollow dome above.

Having also read _Tara Of The Twilight_, I have to wonder a bit about
Carter..

That aside, we have the standard sword-fights, captures & escapes and
the final "hero recalled unwillingly to Earth" sequence pioneered by
Burroughs, but without, I think, the urgency he managed, and the feeling
that the plot was more than just a sequence of events.

I liked these well enough at the time, but I think I am more minded to
revisit Ganelon Slivermane before coming back to book 2 here.
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..