THE OATHBOUND WIZARD

A sequel to the paperback Her Majesty's Wizard (1986) finds Stasheff in the same vein as his popular ``Warlock'' series—with a youngish hero learning the ropes of magic in a medieval fantasy kingdom. The story features a college student from Earth transported to a world where every spoken word becomes reality. As an English major, Matt has a rich fund of ``spells'' at hand in the form of the poetry he remembers from Earth, and so he becomes a powerful magician, saves a kingdom, and wins the heart of its young queen. Here, Matt loses his temper and swears an oath to conquer a neighboring kingdom; of course, he immediately finds himself bound to carry out his word—no small task, since the ruler of the territory is Gordogrosso, an evil wizard of great power. Stasheff introduces a number of amusing characters to help his hero: a cyclops, a dragon, a damsel in distress, Friar Tuck, the Fates, and others more exotic, including a dracogriff. He also gets good mileage out of the tag-ends of mangled verse that Matt recites as the basis of his ``spells.'' Palatable (if unambitious) light fare, likely to be popular with the Piers Anthony crowd.