Lin Carter (1930–1988)

The finale of Lin Carter's Green Star fantasy kept its heroes sequestered from one another in various hardships until the last moment, when they could be brought to a happily-ever-after. The story around Niamh the Fair was a great shout-out to ERB's Master Mind of Mars with peril rooted in medical horror. But the tension was amusingly relieved when it was revealed that the mad scientist was actually bent on decapitating himself! The newer character Zorak of Tharkoon (not to be confused with Zarqa the Kalood) had a didactic adventure among the dispassionate and authoritarian giant ants of the Green Star's world.

The narrating protagonist Karn fell into the clutches of a misandrist tribe of girls who abused him at length, catering no doubt to certain readers. This plotline led to a penultimate moment of farce when he was discovered by Niamh as he deigned to give the teenage amazon Varda a kiss after his many prior refusals. Although the rather lascivious treatment of the extreme youth of the characters has been a persistent feature of these books, it really stood out in this one.

The book is furnished with an appendix itemizing and detailing principal "People of the Green Star World," which repeats and extends for this fifth book a similar feature of the third. Besides the fact that it is set at the end of the book with no calls forward to it earlier in the text, the thumbnail descriptions here seem to be of little actual use to readers. It shows some lack of confidence on the part of Carter (or his editor) that the characters have been drawn strongly enough for the reader to keep them distinct.

The illustrations and cover art are by the excellent fantasy artist Michael Whelan, who would go on a short while later to do a series of wonderful paintings for the covers of a new paperback edition of the Barsoom books. The four interior illustrations are in a pointillistic style, and all the art considerably surpasses what Roy Krenkel had supplied in the earlier Green Star volumes.… (més)

The fourth Green Star book was much like the third, continuing the plots begun in the sky city and the forest floor in the new environment of an inland sea and its jungle islands. It was perhaps a tad "spicier" than earlier arcs of the series, although largely through threat and peril, leaving it relatively tame compared to the larger sword-and-planet field. There is also an unwitting and highly ironic non-consummation of the love-quest central to the series. (Other reviewers have called that part of the story "contrived," but in this sort of exoplanetary fantasy what isn't?)

The most notable feature of the story was its blind narrator. The boy Karn had been blinded at the end of the previous volume, and while parts of the book held out some hope for recovery of his sight, he spent this entire segment unable to see. But despite the fast pace and surfeit of action, the story isn't told as an immediate reportage. It instead recounts multiple threads of plot as companions and allies are separated and adventure in parallel. Karn is supposed to have learned later what had happened to his friends, but his telling interweaves the various developments along a synchronized timeline.

The illustrations in this book are collaborations between Roy Krenkel (whose pictures were in the previous one) and notable comics artist Michael Kaluta. None of them particularly thrilled me, though. Krenkel's cover art is an adequate representation of the moment on page 60, when the women escape an island by means of a great hawk-steed. The rider is thus Arjala, while Niamh the Fair is hanging from the stirrup.… (més)