Greed pulls the archaeologist Matt Carse into the forgotten tomb of the Martian god Rhiannon and plunges the unlikely hero into the Red Planet's fantastic past, when vast oceans covered the land and the legendary Sea-Kings ruled from terraced palaces of decadence and delight. Talented enough to co-write The Big Sleep film with William Faulkner and imaginative enough to pen the original screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back , Leigh Brackett is a giant in the science-fiction field, and The Sword of Rhiannon is one of ...
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Greed pulls the archaeologist Matt Carse into the forgotten tomb of the Martian god Rhiannon and plunges the unlikely hero into the Red Planet's fantastic past, when vast oceans covered the land and the legendary Sea-Kings ruled from terraced palaces of decadence and delight. Talented enough to co-write The Big Sleep film with William Faulkner and imaginative enough to pen the original screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back , Leigh Brackett is a giant in the science-fiction field, and The Sword of Rhiannon is one of her most popular adventure tales.
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Seller's Description:
Good. Collectible-Good. Barbara G. Mertz Rev Trust custom bookplate on front inside cover. This book formed part of Barbara G. Mertz's personal library at her home in Frederick, Maryland. Slightly dampstained. (Fantasy, vintage books, sword and sorcery, action adventure, ace double novel, pulp fiction)
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Seller's Description:
Fair. This is copyright 1953 by Ace Books. The pages show normal wear and tear. The pages are sun faded and slightly yellowing There is some crinkling to some of the pages possibly from water Pages are clean! The cover has visible markings and wear. Fast Shipping-Each order powers our free bookstore in Chicago and sending books to Africa!
Leigh Brackett's 1953 novel "The Sword of Rhiannon" originally appeared in the pulp magazine "Thrilling Wonder Stories" in 1949 under the title "Sea-Kings of Mars". Incurring a literary debt to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Brackett sets her swashbuckling adventure on the Red Planet, where interplanetary archaeological adventurer Matt Carse gets more than he bargained for from a visit to the ancient tomb of Rhiannon the Cursed. Carse is thrown back in time to an earlier epoch of Martian history, before the White Sea has dried up, when vast sea-going empires contended for mastery. Taken as a galley slave, Carse soon realizes that his mind is not wholly his own- during the trip through time, the consciousness of Rhiannon the Cursed has taken up residence in his brain. Rhiannon was an unimaginably powerful scientist of an even earlier epoch of Mars, when he earned his everlasting curse by arming the half-human half-serpent Dhuvians, sworn enemies of humankind on Mars. Thus does Carse become an unwilling protagonist in an ancient war for control of a planet. Brackett is a fine writer whose prose and images rescue her work from frequent brushes with cliche and jumbled plotting. Between the two Martian timeframes, multiple consciousnesses, and contending empires, there is almost too much material here for a short 130-page novel. Brackett writes all the constituent elements well - nautical battles, haughty warrior-princesses, palace intrigues, ancient lore and slithering pre-human horrors, but moves her plot along quickly and evenly so that no one element really emerges as a dominant motif. Brackett was seemingly not concerned with establishing a "brand" as were many writers, before and since, and seems to have simply lavished as much inspiration and thought on this tale as needed to get it to its conclusion, and no more. It's a 50-year-old breath of fresh air from a writer and a time that saw fit to expend such craft and imagination on an enjoyable, but ultimately slim entertainment.
