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- Sci-fi & fantasy - |
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Callisto |
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 Callisto byLin Carter Ibooks (Simon & Schuster) 418 pages, 2000 ISBN 0743400054 Reviewed by our UK Editor Rachel A Hyde Callisto is a welcome addition to the growing number of reissued classics and modern works that make up the iBooks imprint. One can participate electronically with this latest publishing concept via access to the Internet, so the fun doesn’t stop when you close the cover. Read the books, then log on to the virtual readers’ group at www.ibooksinc.com to participate in discussions, leave messages or download chapters from forthcoming releases, order books and more. Lin Carter is one of a small group of writers (most famously Edgar Rice Burroughs) whose work falls midway between SF and fantasy, writing of fantastic civilizations on alien planets visited by people from Earth. This book contains the first two novels in an eight book series - all of which will eventually appear as iBooks - and are two highly enjoyable stories. The narrator, Jon Dark, crashes his helicopter during the Vietnam War in the impenetrable jungles of Cambodia, where he stumbles upon the lost city of Arangkor and a vast jade well that is the portal to another world – one of the moons of Jupiter. It is here that he will have some fabulous adventures. They recall the style of A Princess of Mars and Flash Gordon - replete with cliffhanger endings, valiant sword fighting, dastardly villains and marvellous alien landscapes populated by ancient cities, horrid deities and fearsome beasts. It is difficult to find fault with this breathless cavalcade of wonders written in the 1960s when attitudes were different. There is a dearth of female characters here apart from the warrior princess Darloona. Her sole bit of fighting appears at the end of the second book. She spends the rest of the time languishing in one luxurious prison after another, waiting to be married to one warlord or another, or being rescued. This apart, it was wonderful to read something other than a Tolkeinesque derivative fantasy or a space opera, both popular today in the SF and fantasy genres. Now I’m off to pay another visit to the iBooks’ website - see you there. |
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