THE FIRES OF LAN-KERN

The publisher's foreword describes the pseudonymous Tremayne as author of the definitive history of the Cornish language, an achievement of no visible bearing on his command of English. This maladroit affair, apparently the first installment of a trilogy, employs a science-fiction device of sorts (nuclear-submarine accident lands survivor in post-holocaust future) to establish the not-particularly-seaworthy premise of a 20th-century botanist precipitated into a prehistoric Cornwall of the future seemingly identical to a prehistoric Cornwall of the past (""Time,"" someone observes, ""is like a great circle""). The plot involves a wicked sister-kingdom east of the Fowey and the theft of a mysterious treasure (An Kevryn, ""The Mystery"") from the sanctuary of the local drewyths, a mush-brained brotherhood given to remarks like ""You cannot halt the vibrations of the symphony of life."" Appalling.