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5.0 out of 5 stars
Earthy, Adventurous, Icey......................, Jun 2 2001
This sci-fi novel would probably best be described as... earthy. It's written by ALAN DEAN Foster, and it's sometimes confusing, but written in a familiar, everyday-type style.The book begins with a silly bar game, but moves on to the life of the main narrator, a 'nobody' salesman, Ethan F. Fortune. He is assigned to a city named Brass Monkey on the frozen world of Tran-ky-ky (a native name) to vend modern heaters (the inhabitants are maybe 800 years behind us). But instead he bumbles into a kidnapping along with a 'nobody' teacher. The kidnappers force the unfortunate victims into the lifeboat, but the bar guy had been tossed on board earlier in a drunken sleep. Plus they fail to leave before the kidnappers' bomb detonates and careen to the human-less outbacks of Tran-ky-ky. Now the party of 6 (Ethan, the drunkard - Skua September - , the schoolteacher, a wealthy industrialist, his overweight and sarcastic daughter, and the weak kidnapper - Skua kills the powerful one) must cope with the fascinating but hazardous planet. Here are some things you'll read about: --a *valuable* volcano --a scholarly but dangerous monastery --a feudal island, an old baron and his coquettish daughter --a titanic, vacuum-cleaner ice slug --hairy dragons, nocturnal carnivores, and alien ice plants --a clipper-ship sled! --violent sections involving marauding barbarians (the bulk of the story) The whole thing is served up with clear, understandable writing that's so lifelike it sometimes gets raunchy. This isn't a book you would read more than one chapter at a time of, but the adventure story really does grip you. The science-fiction bits are great, too: the native "tran" (see "Barlowe's Guide to the Extra-Terrestrials") really are believable. So if you want to sit back and read about knights and castles on an ice world, well..... you'll love this novel!
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