Demons of the Dancing Gods

 

By Jack L. Chalker

Book Two of the Dancing Gods series finds the Dark Baron routed in his battle with Ruddygore. The Dark Baron's true identity is still unknown. 

The sorcerer's council is having a big meeting and all the council members will be there, including the Dark Baron. Ruddygore wants Joe and Marge to be there as he tries to figure out which member of the council is the Dark Baron.

Joe and Marge have gone through some changes since the first novel. Joe has been bitten by a were and now changes into whatever creature is nearest during the full moon. Marge has totally changed into some kind of fairy creature, lost about six inches in height, grown some wings, turned into a Playboy caricature of woman and goes around totally nude except for a bit of jewelry and is no longer celibate. 

Ruddygore wants them to infiltrate a powerful witch's castle and get him access to the castle. Ruddygore believes the witch is one of the Dark Baron's allies. They do manage to get inside but soon run afoul of the witch who locks them up. Macore, the thief from the first novel who is now working for Ruddygore, manages to get them free, along with another prisoner, Boquillas, a council member who has been missing for several months. 

Oh, and Joe has a love interest, Tiana, a barbarian warrior princess. Tiana was on the run from the man who killed her father and she spent most of her childhood hiding on Earth. But now she is back and looking to take her father's kingdom away from the powerful sorcerer who killed him. 

This was an okay read, although a bit boring at the beginning. But once Joe and Marge leave the sorcerers' convention, it becomes a lot more interesting, with a shocking and touching final battle between Ruddygore and the Dark Baron. 

The River of the Dancing Gods

 

By Jack L. Chalker

One night a trucker picks up a hitchhiker on a Texas highway. The trucker, Joe, and the hitchhiker, Marge, end up lost when Joe takes the wrong turn. They stop at what looks like it might be a rest stop only to be approached by a portly older well-dressed man. The man, Ruddygore, claims that if Joe continues on with his trucking, he will soon die in a fatal crash. If Joe wants to live, he must come with Ruddygore to another place, a different Earth. For some reason, Joe believes Ruddy and he and Marge join him on his magical ferry to cross the Sea of Dreams and come to a land where wizards and witches, demons and fairies, dragons and unicorns are real and where Ruddygore is one of the most powerful sorcerers in the world. 

Ruddygore needs a person from Earth to help him in his battle against the Dark Baron and a prince of Hell who trying to bring about the End Times, Armageddon. As a man from Earth, Joe's soul will be immune to the demon's powers, which will give Ruddygore a sneaky advantage in the coming conflict. Marge too will have that same protection.

Ruddygore uses his powers to change Joe into a muscle-bound barbarian and Marge into a young, sexy nymph. Back on Earth the two were just ordinary people in their thirties, a bit beaten down by life and hard luck, especially Marge who was definitely on the skids. 

There's a certain magic lamp that the Dark Baron and his demon prince are desperate to get their claws on as they want to use the powers of the genie of the lamp to win the coming battle. So this is Joe and Marge's first big task Ruddygore needs them to perform. Get the lamp before the enemy gets it. 

This was an OK read. I had just finished reading a couple of Chalker's Changewind novels and the resemblance is quite apparent. As in that series, two normal people are pulled into a world of magic and stripped of their past and thrust into new, dangerous situations. According to Google, the Dancing Gods series predates the Changewinds series. Maybe Chalker returned to that theme in the Changewinds series because he had more he wanted to say about two normal people in such an different and unnatural setting. The similarities between the two series is quite striking. Especially his tendency to have main female characters naked and tarted up for most of the story.  They can't just be pretty or cute, no, they have to be sex pots or nymphomaniacs and butt naked except for some jewelry or tattoos. Makes me wonder about Chalker. Not that it matters, he's dead now.

Swan Watch

 

By Budd Schulberg

Budd and his wife Geraldine bought a house on Long Island that was a riverfront property. Wasn't long before they discovered that a pair of swans lived nearby on the river. As is generally true, these swans were aggressive. Locals warned them that swans could be dangerous and advised them to steer clear of the pair. 

But Budd decided to embark on a campaign of gaining the swans' trust. He began by feeding the two birds bread. His campaign worked, although it did take some time. But eventually he got the birds to take bread from his hand. The male was the bravest of the two and let Budd get the closest to him. But the female remained a bit wary. 

Eventually the two swans built a nest and raised a brood of baby swans, seven in all. The cygnets all fledged and were ultimately driven away by their parents in due time. The mated pair stayed on the river year round and the next spring again hatched a brood of baby swans. But this time things did not go well and all the cygnets were victims of predation by a new arrival to the river, the black backed gull.

The book ends with the author wondering about the ability of these two swans to successfully raise their offspring to adulthood with this aggressive new predator on the scene, the black backed gull.

The swans the author was enamored of were mute swans, a non-native species originally from Europe which now considered invasive. This is what Cornell University has to say about mute swans in New York:

Some mute swans are very aggressive and territorial and will chase off and sometimes kill other waterfowl species that enter their territory. With the swan’s large breeding territories in wetlands, they displace many native birds for breeding habitat. Swans tend to be most aggressive during the nesting and brood-rearing stages.

Schulberg's true story about this pair of mute swans dates from the 1970s and I suppose that was before the birds were considered an invasive species. So maybe the arrival of the predatory black backed gulls was not really a bad thing, although he clearly felt it was.

Whatever their ultimate fate in the United States, I did enjoy this short story about Budd Schulberg and the mute swans.

 

Riders of the Winds

 

By Jack L. Chalker

Book Two of the Changewinds series finds the two main characters, Sam and Charley once again in peril and separated. Sam gets found by a winged man and Charley and Boday get captured by raiders and sold off at a slave market. All three women's minds are tampered with using magic and potions, Charley and Boday to be obedient slaves and poor Sam's memory is completely removed and she is brainwashed into believing that being a field hand is a wonderful to life for her.

Eventually Charley and Boday are liberated by Dorion, a third rank sorcerer who is working for the wizard Boolean. The two women are still somewhat controlled by the enslavement magic but at least they are once again on the road to Boolean, facing the adversaries sent against them by Klittichorn, the horned sorcerer. 

Sam is also liberated from her enslavement, although she is so brainwashed she was happy to be a slave. She is rescued by a Navigator, Crim and his alter ego Kira, both of whom were sent by Boolean. 

In the process of their travels, all three women undergo changes. Charley and Boday lose their distinctive body art and tattoos. Charley goes completely blind and acquires a seeing eye cat, Shadowcat. Sam, due to the labor demanded of a field hand, becomes physically fit but remains fat because of the curse put on her in the first book. After all she has gone through, Sam begins to gain confidence in herself and her ability to survive.

The lands the characters travel through are part of a vast confluence of worlds. The author explains it thus: 

 Akahlar intersects with thousands of worlds, but the only common points are the hubs, the points of greatest force and power. The rest are compressed around the hubs and only intersect at certain random intervals. But when they do touch, they are worlds touching round worlds—so that the actual point of overlap is very narrow.

A shadow man also lays out the goals and possible consequences of Klittichorn and his ally the Storm Princess to Sam after she has been freed from her life of hard labor:

"She [the Storm Princess] and all her armies cannot overthrow the Akhbreed sorcerers in their hub citadels or hope to match the great armies of the rulers. She needs the power of true sorcery behind her, and that Klittichorn brings. He has convinced her that he shares her dream, but he does not. For if the power of the Akhbreed sorcerers is somehow halted, and if the Akhbreed themselves are destroyed, there will be no controls. Instead of all hating the Akhbreed, the thousands of races will begin to suspect and hate and then war with one another. And out of this chaos will come the only remaining, untouchable source of great power, which will be Klittichorn. This he believes, but he, too, is wrong. To destroy the Akhbreed and their sorcerers he must loose the terrible changewinds themselves, the only things against which no Akhbreed sorcerer has power. He will loose them by the score and the Storm Princess will guide them."

"Is that—possible?"

"Kittichorn thinks so. She thinks so. He has somehow managed to summon many small changewinds to the places he commands, although how this is done is a mystery, and she has managed to shape and turn them. But those were small, and one at a time. To control great ones, all at once, and all over Akahlar—that is something reason says cannot be done. Reason and experience also tell that such an event, done all at once, would create such an instability that the worlds themselves would collapse upon each other, that the changewinds would roam unchecked and over vast areas, and none would be safe. Such weight alone might draw all of creation down to the Seat of Probability and to oblivion. All that has ever existed, all that exists, and all that can or will exist will be no longer."

 

 War of the Maelstrom is the next book in the series. I liked Riders of the Winds more than I did the first one, which gives me hope that the third book will be worth reading.

 

Lost Dorsai

 

By Gordon R. Dickson

What is a Dorsai? The Dorsai are the people of the planet of the same name. Their specialty is producing elite mercenaries, so much so that Dorsai is a synonym for mercenary throughout the inhabited planets of the Dorsai universe. 

So then what is a "lost Dorsai?" The author explains, "It (the term lost Dorsai) was reserved for those of Dorsai heritage who seemed to have chosen their life work, whatever it was, and then—suddenly and without explanation—abandoned it." The lost Dorsai of the title is Michael, who, "had graduated from the Academy with honors; but after graduation he had abruptly withdrawn his name from assignment and left the planet [Dorsai], with no explanation, even to his family." Michael explains his feelings to another Dorsai, "When I graduated and had to face going out to the worlds as a fighting officer, I finally had to make that decision [about the 'killing part']. And so I did. I can't hurt anyone. I won't hurt anyone—even to save my own life, I think."

Michael's true love is music and he is a talented musician. He became a military band leader on the planet Ceta working for El Conde, the titular ruler of Nahar. He likes his job and is happy in his life. But all good things must come to an end and El Conde is facing a revolution and Michael finds himself the only thing that stands between the revolutionaries howling for El Conde's blood and certain death, as all of El Conde's soldiers have deserted, including the members of Michael's military band and all the workers at the fortress that El Conde and Michael are holed up in. 

Will Michael take up arms to protect himself and El Conde? Or will he stand by his refusal to harm another human, even if it means his own death and the death of that defenseless old man, El Conde?

I enjoyed this story more than I did that of the previous Dorsai story I recently read. For one thing, it didn't have as much politics and battles as the other book. It was more about a small group of people facing insurmountable odds with courage and loyalty to each other. 

Still, even though I did like the book, I have no intention of reading any of the other books in the Dorsai series. Two was enough.