ANDROID AT ARMS

As Andros of Inyana reels from planet to planet, this trisected story zooms from plot to plot, with each new start more remote from the initial center in interest. A storm at the outset frightens an anonymous prisoner and destroys the power system which has supplied the robots who ran the prison and the memory inhibitor that has kept the prisoners in mental darkness. His identity restored, Andros finds himself on a strange planet with five other important prisoners, victims of an intergalactic plot to kidnap them and substitute programmed dummies called androids. The plight of the six, the treachery of some of their members, and their escape by space ship are ingeniously plotted and immediately involving, and interest is sustained after Andros lands on Inyana and becomes involved in maneuvers to win the throne from his double (who appears to be an older Andros and maybe not an android at all). Waiting for his chance to strike, Andros hides in the dreaded Place of No Return, where he is drawn into a parallel world and persuaded by a third Andros, this one a dying emperor, to take his place in the other Inyana, now at war. Andros saves his new kingdom from various human, animal and supernatural foes, but by this time the reader has experienced one too many disorienting shifts. Perhaps a sequel will tie up all the loose ends; here, Andros' willingness to settle for (and in) the parallel kingdom seems a disappointing cop-out.