SOME SUMMER LANDS

by Jane Gaskell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 9, 1978

The fifth, last, and best of Gaskell's Atlan chronicles--which have all been about a muddled alliance of powers in antediluvian South America invading the ancient continent of Atlan to the east. Heroine Cija, a gushy little twit with a propensity for being raped and/or abducted by every male she meets, is here led on the usual merry chase (the birth of her half-ape-man child, some time in a chastity belt, and the unwelcome attentions of her brother/lover) before reuniting with her husband Zerd at the final fall of Atlan. But Gaskell has scrapped the device of Cija's diary, substituting Cija's mute child Seka as a far more matter-of-fact narrator of the lurid antics, sexual and otherwise. And so ends (it seems) one of the strangest concoctions in the history of fantasy-literature: it's impossible to ignore its idiocies, but also impossible to discount its sheer force of imagination.

Pub Date: Feb. 9, 1978

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1978

Categories: FICTION