Accessory - Dragon Magazine #111.pdf - Index of

Jones’s best efforts to recruit Ozark as a
Federation member (the Federation would
dearly love to acquire some of the Ozarkers’
magical skills), the planet’s citizens stubbornly
refuse to join.
The contrast between Tri-Galactic
“psience” and Ozarker magic is intriguingly
drawn, and Elgin’s story moves at a
satisfying pace. But Coyote Jones and
Ozark’s Responsible of Brightwater have
both been protagonists in their separate
adventures, and setting them against each
other makes for an unsettling conflict in
which neither really wins.
On one level, that’s the stuff of good
literature — and there are a number of
hints and suggestions that Elgin knows
exactly what she is doing with the social
issues she raises. Those issues, plus at least
one glaring loose end involving a smuggled
Bible, virtually demand a sequel.
But on another level, fans of the earlier
Jones and Ozark tales may have a right to
feel a bit cheated. Both series have been
praised as clever and humorous adventures
in a lighter vein, and while this newest book
keeps to the same general tone, it is very
definitely trying to be something slightly
different. Elgin’s intentions may be good,
but it may take another book before her
readers are convinced that the shift in mood
is justified.
WITCH BLOOD
Will Shetterly
Ace 0-441-89644-8 $2.95
According to the new Oriental Adventures
rules for the AD&D® game, martial
artists (better known as monks) don’t belong
in traditional Western-style campaigns.
Though it’s probably true that monks lit
best in Oriental surroundings, one need
only read Witch Blood to learn that they
can be highly effective in the more familiar
worlds of medieval fantasy as well.
As a young boy, Rifkin is chosen by
wandering disciples of the Warrior Saint to
learn the disciplines and skills of the martial
arts. This involves lengthy schooling in a
lonely mountain retreat, and the descriptions
both of this place and the craft it
teaches mark Rifkin as a monk of no small
ability. The main story, however, is set in a
crumbling castle that is home to a besieged
band of outcast witches, and echoes strongly
of eastern Europe.
Not surprisingly, Rifkin is himself a
wanderer, and it is by accident that he
enters the valley of Castle Gromandiel. His
martial powers enable him to defeat the
huge bear that serves as one of the witches’
guardians, and in return for the slaying
Rifkin agrees to serve Naiji, the castle’s
mistress.
From that point on, Witch Blood piles
mystery upon intrigue. There are spies
among the castle staff and ninja-like master
assassins in the woodwork. More prosaic
political struggles pit Count Talivane Gromandiel
against a neighboring duke, and
eventually find the castle literally under
36 JULY 1986
siege. Stranger yet, Rifkin displays an
inexplicable affinity for magic that only
explains itself when a part of his past unexpectedly
catches up with him.
Though Rifkin is usually a strong defender
of honor, he is far from being pure of
mind and not above devious maneuvering
when it suits his purpose. Will Shetterly
does a dextrously detailed job of sketching
Rifkin’s personality and provides a sharpeyed
but ascetic tone to the narration that
perfectly understates the dark atmosphere of
the tale. The prose style is markedly different
from Shetterly’s previous novel, Cats
Have No Lord, demonstrating versatility as
well as substantial talent. Only in the very
last line does he slip slightly out of character,
and then only to foreshadow a sequel.
For the promise of another story about
Rifkin Wanderer, that moment of flippancy
is easily forgiven.
THE CROSS-TIME ENGINEER
Leo Frankowski
Del Rey 0-345-32762-4 $2.95
A healthy percentage of AD&D® gamers
raise strenuous objections to any introduction
of technology or advanced science into
the medieval setting of the game. While the
world of The Cross-Time Engineer lacks
the counterbalancing element of magic, it
still offers skeptical players and referees a
well-reasoned response to those objections,
and does so with a remarkable style combined
with a touch of cheerful irony.
Leo Frankowski’s novel (the first of four)
uses a familiar premise: Conrad Schwartz,
a near-future engineer on a hiking trip, is
accidentally thrown backward to a pretechnological
time. But there are numerous
twists in the concept, all important to the
novel’s development. Conrad is Polish, and
conveniently lands in Poland in the year
1231 — just ten years before the country is
due to be wiped out by a Mongol invasion.
Trapped in the thirteenth century, he decides
to do the patriotic thing: industrialize
Poland and prepare to thwart the Mongols.
And just to make matters more interesting,
Conrad is a confirmed socialist.
To add a hint of mystery to this otherwise
straightforward scenario, Frankowski adds
occasional interludes to the story in which
observers from Conrad’s time comment on
his progress. Though they provide Conrad
with the means to begin his campaign, their
roles aren’t fully defined. Clearly, future
volumes will twist in unexpected directions.
Frankowski’s prose is smooth and wryly
humorous, and his research has clearly been
thorough. Aside from the potential timetravel
paradoxes, the plot holds few surprises,
but that isn’t really a valid criticism.
Rarely has unabashedly historical science
fiction been this much fun, and readers
should be eager to collect future books and
find out whether Conrad really can get a
live-hundred-year start on the industrial
revolution.
THE UNICORN QUEST
John Lee
Tor 0-812-54400-5 $2.95
The title of this novel is an accurate (if
rather abbreviated) description of its contents,
which, in a year overrun with books
about dragons, initially sounds like a promising
change from the norm. Unfortunately,
too much of John Lee’s tale is vague and
rambling, and the parts that aren’t owe
entirely too much to certain of the dragon
stories.
There has been a war going on for a very
long time in the Strand — a war between
kingdoms whose civilization is based on
magic and mysterious alien Others with
awesome technological weapons. Indeed, it
appears that the Others may finally win
unless two young people (one an aspiring
mage, the other the daughter of a noble
house) can manage to fulfill a prophecy
uttered out of the blue.
It might have been a successful plot. But
the war takes place almost entirely offstage
so that there is very little sense of tension or
of a genuine threat, and the basis of the
conflict — revealed at the very end of the
book — has nothing to do either with unicorns
or with the human civilization, for the
most part. As for the protagonists Jarrod
and Marianna, Lee sets up the expected
romance almost at once, then puts it on
hold for the sake of the old convention
about unicorns favoring virgins — only to
set it back on track again late in the novel.
Odder still, Lee gives the unicorns very
little to do beyond standing around and
looking impressive. Though they do possess
magical power needed to combat the Others,
their mere presence is apparently
enough to turn the tide. And Lee’s unicorns
have both telepathic powers and the ability
to teleport through something called Interim
— abilities that give them an