Electronic OtherRealms #15 May, 1987 Part 1 Table of Contents Part 1 Editor's Notebook Chuq Von Rospach Darkchild-Bluesong-Starsilk Barbara Jernigan Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels Jim Day The Regiment Danny Low The Adventures of Hajii Baba of Ispahan Dave Taylor A Door Into Ocean Alan Wexelblat With a Single Spell Peter Rubinstein Part 2 Things Received Pico Reviews Part 3 Words of Wizdom Chuq Von Rospach Terry Carr Dies Back and Forth Across the Ghetto Walls, and Other Perigrinations James Brunet Editor's Notebook Bureaucracy in Action I suppose it had to happen eventually. I've had reports that some copies of #14 showed up with postage due. It was a small issue, and according to my scale under the limit, but some folks at the USPS evidently disagreed. Most copies seem to have come through unharmed, but if you were one of the ones who got caught, my humble apologies. If you can figure out a way of letting me know (without costing yourself more than the $.17 you had to tithe the PO) I'll make you whole -- say, at a con or at the bottom of that LOC you were going to write me. Of course, the USPS isn't perfect. I sent six copies of #14 into Canada, and due to temporary brain malfunction put U.S. postage on them. Of the six, four came back for more postage, and there were two different values for postage due. And when they went back out with proper postage, one came back a second time, just for the hell of it. I guess I've been lucky to date, the Post Office hasn't done anything nasty to me, although my postman has occasionally threatened suicide when forced to put all that mail in that little tiny box. Keep up the good work! (I like getting mail...) A Letter in My Mailbox Speaking of getting mail, the lettercol seems to be dying off again. The Hugo argument has disappeared without a trace, and except for a few screwups on my part, I don't seem to hear from you folks much. There are pages just waiting for your thoughts to be shouted to the world. So why don't you folks write? The rules for a LOC (Letter of Comment) are simple. You write it and mail it to me. If it gets published, you get a free copy of OtherRealms, and the masses see what you have to say. The only topic that isn't allowed in the Lettercol is glowing praise for me or my magazine (those I frame in the privacy of my own home, where nobody can see me blush). The New Address Please make sure that you use the new address in the masthead. By the time you see this, I won't be living in Sunnyvale anymore, and I don't want to confuse the postman any more than I have to. They are supposed to forward things, but right now I don't quite trust them... Con Schedules Just as a side thought, since I like meeting people interests, if you're going to be at a Con that I'm at, please feel free to track me down and say hello. My current schedule has me at Baycon and Westercon here in the S.F. Bay area, and I'm also planning on making the trip to Brighton for Worldcon. If you're going to be there, I'd love to hear about it so we can find time to sit and talk. Coming Up As we grind our way to going quarterly, you'll start seeing some changes in OtherRealms, change I hope all of you can help. Besides dedicating more space to the lettercol (hint! hint!) I'm starting to look for more feature material to supplement the reviews. I have articles on Historical Realism (by Harry Turtledove), Hard SF (by Jim Brunet) and Brian Aldiss (by Davis Tucker) but I need more. If you want to write an article on your favorite author, your favorite style of fiction, or just about anything you want that has to do with authors and books, please drop me a note about it. My hope is to eventually run about 25% feature material and 75% reviews. I'm also interested in doing a series of author or artist interviews, either new or reprints. If you are an author who is tired of answering the same questions over an over again, why not try this? Interview yourself! I'm also looking for more art. My inventory is up (thank you!) but I still need a lot of smaller, filler type material and cover art. I hope to do my first cover art in the July issue in time for Westercon, and I have a nice piece from joan hanke-woods, last year's Hugo winner, to kick it off, but unless I get more covers, that will be the only cover I'll do. If you're an artist with some genre material, I'd really like to hear from you. Until next month! Darkchild -- Bluesong -- Starsilk Sydney J. Van Scyoc Berkley Science Fiction [****+] Reviewed by Barbara Jernigan barb@oliveb.ATC.Olivetti.COM Copyright 1987 by Barbara Jernigan WARNING: slight spoiler, as the books do build upon each other. One of the most common complaints against Fantasy and Science Fiction is that the alien cultures just aren't alien enough. Van Scyoc's books are above the crowd. The people of the planet Brakrath, human colonists stranded when their ship crashed, and thus isolated from the human mainstream for generations, keep step within an alien culture defined by both physical and social mutations to their less-than-hospitable world. It is a logical society with a rich history, with legend -- particularly when speaking of the barohnas, the stone-women who serve as living solar collectors, bringing warmth, light and a long enough growing season to the valley folk on the sun-starved world. The reader can believe in this world, in its people, with their culture as rich as any on real-time Earth. My only criticism, and this a point of personal prejudice, is that Van Scyoc is not quite sensual -- as in sensory details -- enough. A small quibble indeed, for she certainly provides enough fodder for complete imagery -- her brush- strokes are spare, like the best of the Chinese Zen painters. All three books are "rites of passage," and the three taken together serve as an epic. Each is a complete tale -- though best read in order for the sense of history. They are also written in an interesting controlled point of view style. Chapters bear the headings of one of the characters -- Khira, Darkchild, Danior, Keva -- and follow that character in so tight a third-person that only a heartbeat shift would make it first-person perspective. Occasionally, the same scene will be retold from another character's point of view in the next chapter. It is refreshing to read so disciplined an author. Darkchild has three protagonists, Khira, last surviving palace daughter of the Valley Terlath, Darkchild, the curious boy she finds midwinter, a stranger to Brakrath, and the Guide, an entity embedded in Darkchild's consciousness with the command to protect the boy, and keep him learning. For Darkchild, we immediately discover, is an information gathering tool of the Benderzic ("Who could refuse or distrust a child? And who, but a child, is most able to learn a very great deal in a very short time?"). The Benderzic then reclaim their unsuspecting information gatherers and drain their memories selling knowledge the target worlds' treasures -- and fatal weaknesses -- to the highest bidder. Darkchild has no memory when Khira finds him, crouched in the snow; he is a blank slate, obedient to the control of the Guide, the Guide who controls the mental doors leading to Darkchild's true identity and to memories the boy best not see for the pain they would bring. Khira is also Darkchild's protector -- and Darkchild is her protection from a winter of loneliness. For in the valleys of Brakrath, all but the palace daughters -- barohnas never bear sons to term -- hibernate the deep-snow winters, while their barohnas await the return of the sun in their winter palaces, high in the mountains. Khira was alone, for her sister had failed in her challenge that summer, the ritual of facing and slaying a dangerous beast in the mountains, an act that would bring the sudden mutation from frail human adolescent to tall, strong featured, bronze-skinned, sun-stone commanding (among other things) barohna. Failing her challenge, the palace daughter never returned, and the legends of the people said her soul became a bird.... Khira befriends Darkchild, and teaches him the ways of Brakrath. He is a quick study, though he feels she doesn't appreciate just how quick he is. She does appreciate, with no small annoyance, that there is more than just Darkchild in the dark-haired waif. There is another. And the other is not her friend -- nor, she senses, is he Darkchild's. Plus there is the warning of the Armini, another information gathering race, who are surveying Brakrath with the Council [of barohnas]'s permission. They inform Khira of Darkchild's Benderzic connections, and, worse to them, that he is a Rauthimage, a clone among hundreds of clones, created without permission from explorer Birnam Rauth. The explorer is a mystery, disappeared centuries ago, his call for help repeating in the song of a strange alien white silk. Darkchild tells of Khira's coming of age -- and that of Darkchild and his Guide. Each has a challenge -- like any adolescent, that of finding themselves. Khira and Darkchild meet that challenge against the tapestry of a very strange, and quite intriguing world. Bluesong takes up the thread twenty years later. Darkchild has been reborn as Iahn, and is the barohna Khira's consort. They have several children, one is a boy, Danior. Danior, at least in his own eyes, is a nonentity. There is no place but civil courtesy for a palace son, for there has never been a palace son. There is no tradition to guide his steps, as there is for his sisters -- even though his sisters' tradition will likely get them killed when they challenge. He bitterly bears this lack of place as an albatross around his neck. He must make a legend for himself -- as his father made a legend for himself. But what? He has no direction, nothing but simple-minded, shorter-lived adolescent impulses. Until he takes a pairing stone into his hand and it glows with life -- a pairing stone, which should answer only to a barohna, and then only if another barohna has the stone's mate. The barohna that should have the other stone is dead, her consort, Iahn's Rauthimage "brother" Jhaviir and their young daughter long disappeared. Danior's destiny glows in his hand, and his first impulse is to throw it from him. He at last decides to go to his great-great grandmother in the plains, hoping to find wisdom in her uncanny understanding. Keva is the other player in Bluesong's saga of growing up. She has dreams of a bearded, dark haired man riding a whitemane and a blue silk that sings a voiceless song in the wind. Just dreams, she is told by her foster mother, a member of the isolated, antagonistically suspicious fisher- people, who live by the warmstreams without need of the evil, power- hungry barohnas, who drew the sun's fire as easily as one might draw water from the warmstream...and used that fire to destroy all who would stand against them, enslaving the rest. She reluctantly accedes to this, though the dreams constantly haunt her like insistent memory, until she finds evidence in her foster mother's effects to the contrary: a thin strip of blue silk and a stone, set as if for a necklace. Knowing the truth, that she was stolen from her wandering, nameless father, Keva leaves the warmstreams to seek him. She is woefully ignorant of life beyond the warmstreams -- and, worse, has been trained to distrust, even hate the enslaving barohnas of the mountains. This becomes great trouble when she unwittingly meets her challenge, in a moment of protective adrenaline taking "stone into her heart" and transmorphing in a space of heartbeats (no surprise to the reader) into a barohna. Now her quest is two-fold, to find her father, and to learn to accept, and then master, her considerable powers -- powers that seem to wield themselves. Danior finds her, recognizing her instantly as his cousin, nay, as his Rauthsister -- for their Rauthimage fathers are genetically identical. Here is a kindred spirit, he decides, one who can share his quest for identity. She also holds the other pairing stone. Keva understands nothing of this -- she wants only to find her father, he can explain this unwelcome change. If he is not in the valleys or the plains, then perhaps the desert. She slips away, trodding ignorantly into greater danger. Danior, of course, follows -- and together they find themselves, and their destinies, their legend, in a delightfully unexpected way. Finally, there is Starsilk. Starsilk strays from the boy-girl formula of the first two books, focussing instead on Reyna, Iahn and Khira's youngest daughter, and Tsuuka, a cat-like sithi residing on the planet of the singing silks. When the book opens Reyna thinks she has a place, unlike her brother Danior in the preceding book. Her two older sisters have failed their challenges, her father, after an apparent quarrel with her mother, has left to visit his brother in the desert, his return date disturbingly indefinite. Reyna cannot bear the loneliness. She knows, at fifteen, she is past her majority, past her time -- and is driven, greatly by fear of failure, to train for her challenge. But she is not to go, her mother says with the backing of an Armini gauge. Even if she were to kill her beast, she would not change, she did not have the brain mutation that would transform her into a barohna, she would die, if not by the first beast then by the next she would undoubtedly seek, and her death would have no meaning. So what could she do? Remain forever a palace child? Already quickening in her mother's womb is the daughter that will, according to the Armini scanner, succeed her; a daughter fathered by a stranger, as was typical barohna custom, the white-haired hunter Juaren. Reyna, then, was nothing. She had no place. The heiress to the sun throne would be born before the next spring. Well then, Reyna decides, she will face her challenge anyway, death preferable to a life trapped in a child's body. But that is not Reyna's destiny. True, she was not born to be a barohna, but she can meet another challenge, that of finding her grandfather, Birnam Rauth, whose distress call is recorded on the white silk. Her brother Danior has seen visions in the silks' songs, the Armini know the home-planet of the silks. It is there Reyna must look, her challenge is to be the first Brakrathi to leave the planet. Her challenge and Juaren's. Who has a promise of his own to fulfill. Tsuuka, meanwhile, has her own troubles, born of nightmare and memory. Her bowersibling, Maiilin, was stolen from her when they were but weanlings, transformed, mysteriously, into a mindless growler by something she should not have seen in the heart of the forest, where no sithi should ever go. Tsuuka blames Maiilin's loss on herself, for she was too timid to stay by her side in her recklessness. And now, Tsuuka's favorite cub, Dariim, the very image of Maiilin, is drawn into the forbidden depths of the wood, called by an angry red starsilk she has claimed for her own. Can Tsuuka bear to let history repeat itself? And what of her own questions? What is it that the sithi should not know? Who is the Unseen? What is the truth of the singing silks? And who are the strange beings who now walk her planet with their own quest? Are they her enemies? The Unseen's? What waits in the dark groves of the forest's heart? Together, Reyna and Tsuuka find their answers -- and in that answer Brakrath's own challenge is discovered. In the words of Juaren, the last of the hunters who knows his true sworn task, that of protector, the enemies of Brakrath must be discovered, studied, and understood, and the protector must then wake the people. Brakrath has long lingered in ignorant isolation. But, with the growing interest of outside races, the studious Armini, the opportunistic Benderzic, it is time for Brakrath to wake. Three quests of discovery, three rites of passage, and the birth of a world's awareness to the galaxies beyond its dim star. Van Scyoc creates in detail the cultures of two worlds, one the human outgrowth of generations of adapting to a hostile planet, the other completely alien -- and very believable. Plus glimpses of many more. Her universe is that of splintered humanity, First Earth but a distant memory. It is a rich tapestry, a real tapestry, exceedingly well wrought. Van Scyoc understands human nature. Her protagonists are fully human, they have hopes, fears, doubts, shortcomings, and surprising (to them) inner strengths -- and they, like the worlds they inhabit, are real. This trilogy has placed itself in my top- ten. Go read! Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels David Pringle 224 pages, 1985, $15.95 hardcover Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc. [***] Reviewed by Jim Day JimDay.Pasa@Xerox.Com Copyright 1987 by Jim Day David Pringle is well known to readers of British Science Fiction as editor of Interzone, the only SF magazine currently being published in Britain. He also edits Foundation: The Review of Science Fiction, published three times a year. Following a foreword by Michael Moorcock is an introduction in which Pringle gives a short account of the development of SF as a distinct form of fantastic fiction. Next is a very brief bibliography of reference works dealing with science fiction. Although useful, the list is far from complete. The main part of the book consists of a series of essays arranged in chronological order from 1949 to 1984. Each essay discusses the merits of a book selected by Pringle as an outstanding example of the SF novels of its time. Are all of these books truly outstanding? Pringle admits that not more than a dozen could really be considered literary masterpieces, and he explains that his purpose is not to tout these novels as great literature but to encourage people to read good SF. To provide some indication of Pringle's critical judgement it may be useful to mention the first book chosen by him from each decade of SF. The first of these is George Orwell's 1984, published in 1949, a story about life in the future totalitarian state of Oceania. Pringle notes that the book is really not so much a prediction of things to come as it is an exaggerated view of the way things actually were in the forties. The first book from the Fifties to be discussed by Pringle is Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, a colorful collection of stories about human exploration and exploitation of the planet Mars. According to Pringle, Bradbury ignored consensus views on how SF should be written and used the motifs of science fiction to achieve his own literary ends, often slighting technical detail and scientific plausibility to express a particular style or mood. Pringle's favorite story from Bradbury's book is "And The Moon Be Still As Bright." The first novel selected from the Sixties is Rogue Moon, by Algis Budrys, a story in which human volunteers travel to the Moon via matter transmission. Their task is to map a deadly lunar maze constructed by an unknown alien race. Pringle explains that the primary emphasis of this novel is on psychology rather than technology, exploring the ultimate limits of human endurance. The first novel from the Seventies is Tau Zero, by Poul Anderson, the story of a starship bound for a planet some 30 light-years away. An accident occurs in which the ship's deceleration system is destroyed, causing it to accelerate inexorably toward light-speed. Pringle says, "The consequences, for the ship's crew and for the fabric of reality, are ingeniously worked out -- mind boggling seems much too mild a term to describe them." The first novel selected by Pringle from the present decade is Timescape by Gregory Benford, a story in which a small group of scientists tries to avert a global disaster by sending a warning message 35 years into the past. Pringle comments that "... the very difficulties of the enterprise, the stubbornness of actuality against which the characters are continually bruising their heads, make this the most convincing example of time travel in all science fiction." Although I have not read all of the novels discussed in Pringle's essays, I tend to agree with his evaluation of those that I have read, and believe that he has succeeded quite well in outlining, by example, the development of SF over a span of 35 years. The book provides information about first and current editions of each novel discussed, and also includes an alphabetic index of names and titles. The Regiment John Dalmas Baen Books, $3.50, 404 pages [***] Reviewed by Danny Low hplabs!hpccc!dlow Copyright 1987 by Danny Low While the book has enough military action to satisfy those who like military SF, the military action is only half of the book. I could not identify a single original story element in this book. On the other, Dalmas has put together a tasty and unique stew of a SF story using old SF plot ideas and devices. The main character, Varlik 681 Lormagen, is a journalist assigned to cover what appears to be a minor local uprising on the planet Kettle. He quickly discovers that the minor rebellion is a full scale uprising by a well trained, well equipped and well led native army with outside support. The government is using T'swa mercenaries in an attempt to defeat the rebels. Varlik attaches himself to the Red Scorpion T'swa Regiment. His adventures with the regiment forms the first half of the story. Varlik discovers the T'swi soldiers are finely cultured which does not fit into his image of professional soldiers. Wounded, Varlik decides to visit the T'swi's home planet while recuperating. This begins the second half of the book. He learns something of the T'swi culture and the plot that is behind the rebellion on Kettle. The trail of the plotters leads back to the capital and some very high government officials. The characterization is adequate. The description of military routine and action is realistic. The plot is reasonable. The only serious flaw is that the nature of the plot is obvious from the very beginning to an experienced SF reader. The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan James Morier Originally published in 1824 Oxford University Press edition of 1954 [*****] Reviewed by Dave Taylor hplabs!taylor Copyright 1987 by Dave Taylor Fantasy is a genre that has been around for a long time. The roots are the oral histories of ancient civilizations and the moral lessons of cultures (Aesop's fables, for example). A particular geographic region also occasionally creates a type of story, and the Mysterious Middle East before and during the initial British colonization efforts was a fertile ground for exciting Fantasy. The most famous of these tales is The Arabian Nights, the premise of which is that the wily princess Scheherazade foils her husbands plot to kill her by spinning out a new tale each night to avoid her execution. Another popular tale of this genre is the magic lamp/three wishes story -- Aladdin and his Magic Lamp is popular to all, as is another tale Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Most of those don't really impart much of a feel of the culture and civilization that they take place in. The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan is quite different. It is a tale of a scoundrel, Hajji Baba, who wanders about Persia getting into and out of scrapes with deftness, wit, and the occasional beating. The story begins with our hero being educated by his parents, and his learning about the "ways of the world." He decides to travel, rather than simply take up his father's trade, and is almost immediately kidnapped by the vicious Turcomans, who make a slave boy out of him. Fortunately, Hajji has learned enough from his father to be able to give very good shaves, and he manages to get out of this particular scrape okay. Of course, he becomes a thief, stealing the Turcoman money. Then he finds himself in the position of having to steal back into his home city and rob it with a band of cut-throats. Hajji manages to find quite a bit of adventure, and a fair sprinkling of love and friendship, and grow from boyhood into manhood. As the reader, we are not only allowed to know of Hajji, but we are also given a fun, colorful tour of Persia in the early 1800's. To give you an idea of how fun this book is, here's an excerpt from where Hajji describes to his doctor associate (don't ask how he became an assistant to a doctor!) how the Shah of Persia took the medicine of a Western (Frank) doctor: When once he had got possession, he looked at it with intense eagerness, and turned it over and over on his palm, without appearing one whit more advanced in his knowledge than before. At length, after permitting him fully to exhaust his conjectures, I told him that the Frank doctor had made no secret in saying that it [the pill] was composed of jivch, or mercury. "Mercury!" exclaimed Mirza Ahmak -- "just as if I did not know that. And so, because this infidel, this dog of an Isauvi [follower of Jesus], chooses to poison us with mercury, I am to lose my reputation, and my prescriptions are to be turned into ridicule. Whoever heard of mercury as a medicine? Mercury is cold, and lettuce and cucumber are cold also. You would not apply ice to dissolve ice? The ass does not know the first rudiments of his profession. No, Hajji, this will never do; we must not permit our beards to be laughed at in this manner." Suffice to say that this is one of my all-time favorite books, one that I have read at least five times since I got it. It's wonderful, lots and lots of fun, and highly amusing. It's also a fine glimpse of a very different culture and of how the Persians first viewed and treated the strange beardless Westerners. Very highly recommended. A Door into Ocean Joan Slonczewski Avon, 406 pp, 1986, $3.95 [***] Reviewed by Alan Wexelblat wex@mcc.Com Copyright 1987 by Alan Wexelblat How does a reviewer go about disagreeing with the New York Times Book Review? That august publication has said of A Door Into Ocean that "you not only know the protagonists intimately, you care passionately about the outcome." I'm sorry to say that, for this reviewer, it just wasn't so. A four-hundred-page novel has to be fairly spectacular for me to become passionate about it. Door is not spectacular. It has its good moments and its bad. Slonczewski has obviously put a great deal of time and effort into developing this work. The characters are three-dimensional, with histories and futures. Even the minor characters are drawn in painstaking detail. The world they live in is also well-drawn; taken as a whole, it hangs together well. However, in four hundred pages, there is room for a lot of mistakes; some of the goofs here are real whoppers. Some have to with not thinking out the full consequences of the setting; others are as simple as allowing a character to use the word hassle the way we 20th-century Americans do. These mistakes crop up just often enough to play havoc with the reader's suspension of disbelief. A Door Into Ocean is the story of the clash of two cultures. This clash is shown through the eyes of protagonists who travel from one culture to the other. Slonczewski goes to great lengths to create aliens who are truly alien. The cultures are well-developed, with rich backgrounds and an abundance of detail. At times this becomes oppressive; Slonczewski has a tendency to use the unusualness of her setting as a club with which she bashes her readers. Despite the length of the book, we are never given the chance to slip into the culture. Either we understand immediately or we are lost from the start. The novel is set in a far-distant future in which the watery moon Shora circles the planet Valedon. Each planet has human-descended inhabitants. They are physically distinct, though, because the natives of Shora have developed adaptations that allow them to survive better in an ocean/island environment. Valedon is an ordinary world. Post-holocaust in nature, the majority of the people live at a low technological level. Atomic energy is known but forbidden by the feudalistic overlords. The people live as traders, small merchants, soldiers and peasants. The upper classes monopolize the high- technology items that are available and control the world's spaceport. Valedonian society is organized around stone: each person must wear a stone indicating his or her profession; most of the names of people and places are derived from mineral names. Shora, on the other hand, is anything but ordinary. It is populated exclusively by females. They live on and in giant sea-plants that serve as rafts, homes, food sources and more. They have developed an advanced biological and genetic science that allows them to reproduce and live in perfect harmony with their world. Their culture is peacefully anarchic -- decisions are made by Gatherings of all adults. They also follow the doctrine of non-violence that we associate with Ghandi (although the author never credits him). Spinel, a native of Valedon, is the male lead of the story. He is brought to Shora by Merwen, an influential Shoran who wishes to use him to prove to her sisters that Valedonians are human. Valedonians wish to trade with Shora to obtain the valuable sea-silk that the Shorans harvest and spin into fabrics. However, many Shorans oppose the use of the items that the Valedonians trade. Also, some Shorans suffer from a debilitating psychological addiction to the gems that the traders bring. A debate ensues whether to close the planet and expel the Valedonians. In the midst of this, the rulers of Valedon invade Shora. They set about conquering the planet. The Shoran's non-violence sets up a situation wherein we find out what happens if they held a war and one side didn't show up. While Slonczewski handles both plot and characters with reasonable skill, the thing that most alienated me from this book was the subtext. Door is clearly intended as a metaphor for our 20th-century American society, with Valedon representing the authoritarian, nasty, destructive, warlike males and Shora the anarchic, kind, peaceful females. We are shown how men mess things up and how only women can understand and harmonize with the world we live in. Some people may like the message; I found it simplistic and vaguely insulting. With a Single Spell Lawrence Watt-Evans Del Rey, 263 pages, $3.50 [***] Reviewed by Peter Rubinstein Copyright 1987 by Peter Rubinstein In With a Single Spell, Lawrence Watt-Evans tries his hand at a common story line. The plot line of young innocent being forced to rely on his own resources, coming of age and growing to adulthood should be familiar to everyone. How the author sets the situation, develops the characters, and injects unique elements into the story determine how entertaining the novel will be. The protagonist, Tobas, begins as a spoiled, lazy rich kid who resists being forced into the cold cruel world once by tricking an aging wizard into accepting him as an apprentice. When Roggit, the wizard, dies after teaching Tobas but a single spell, Tobas is finally forced to leave his sheltered environment and seek his fortune elsewhere. He is then faced with a series of trials that he must negotiate successfully using his wits and his one spell. As I read this novel, I found myself waiting for Tobas to acquire more spells, enabling him to deal with his problems. The author manages to remain faithful to his original premise, however, while still allowing a gratifying development of increased power for the reader identifying with Tobas. Evaluating this book according to the criteria presented above, I would say that the situation is set reasonably well. Watt-Evans provides ample opportunity for the reader to identify with Tobas. The story continues plausibly enough after the stage has been set and Tobas starts out on his adventures. One of my few complaints is that the author has rigged things to make Tobas' biggest obstacle susceptible to his single spell. In the area of character development, the story is a bit weaker. The initial layout of Tobas character is adequate, but as the story progresses, little is done to add to the reader's insight into his personality. I received the impression at the end that Tobas was still essentially a child. Additionally, there is little done to establish more than one dimension in any of the secondary characters. Finally, there is the injection of unique elements into the plot. Here Watt-Evans has done a much better job. The concept of Tobas facing his obstacles with a single spell is maintained effectively. The plot twists that advance the story and the punch line (punch chapter?) are both well done. The book is sufficiently entertaining to be recommended, although readers who enjoy complexity in their reading may come away disappointed. OtherRealms #15 May, 1987 Copyright 1987 by Chuq Von Rospach. All Rights Reserved. One time rights have been acquired from the contributors. All rights are hereby assigned to the contributors OtherRealms may be reproduced in its entirety only for non-commercial purposes. With the exception of excerpts used for promotional purposes, no part of OtherRealms may be re-published without permission.