I've only ever read this author in collaboration with L. Sprauge deCamp. But he's got an excellent, detailed, inventive style and can world-build as well as anyone. I found myself wondering how he'd put so much into such a slim novel, and how he expected to complete it properly. In the end, he succeeded by making the ending turn on how all the various larger parts pushed and pulled a small but central part of the story. Satisfying, although I wish he'd written more. ( )

Parallel universe fantasy with a seductive quest where a couple try to subvert each other's bid for power. Worth a read if you can find it. Surprised no one has made a historical fantasy film out of this one. ( )

something really wrong with some early sci-fi... and some contemporary sci-fi that holds on to some early sci-fi. It's made for gross men. ( )

The Blue Star predates The Lord of the Rings: it’s fantasy from an earlier era – no dwarfs, elves or Celtic myths, and what magic there is is only slightly less abstract than the sex. Actually, the 1969 edition is labelled adult fantasy, and one of the unexpected pleasures of the book is discovering just how chaste adult fantasy could be back then.

A prologue promises an alternative universe where magic occupies the place that science occupies in ours. If that promise creates an expectation of something like Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, then the book will disappoint. In fact, the practitioners of magic are a tiny, proscribed minority. Our young hero starts out as an idealistic member of a revolutionary group in a land ruled by a queen (who remains an abstraction) and a repressive social order. Following orders from the Central Committee he seduces a young witch and promises fidelity in order to gain control of her Blue Star, an amulet that gives its wearer telepathic powers. There’s a love story, then, and a political story: will the seduction lead to true love? can a revolutionary movement with such a utilitarian attitude to young love really lead to freedom? The playing out of these questions is diverting enough, and the subversively anti-romantic politics are engaging, especially the section about the Amorosans, who talk the talk of everything being done in love, but are just as repressive as their enemies across the water. On the whole, though, the book didn't overwhelm me. If you can imagine a Lord of the Rings where Bilbo decides that there are more important things than destroying the ring and that the Return of the King and the defeat of Sauron, for good or bad, will happen (or not) without his help, you have some idea of the impact.

A word of warning: skip Lin Carter’s spoilerish introduction, or at least save it for after you’ve read the rest of the book. You might also want to skip the prologue, which seems to be there to justify the fantasy mode, and doesn’t do it very well. ( )

Although it is not my favorite Pratt --not up to The Well of the Unicorn, say --it is still well above average for a solidly thought-out fantasy universe. In its day, it was very unusual in that its universe was roughly 18th century (shades of the French Revolution) instead of ancient/medieval. ( )