The Sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett
136 pages
Published 1953
Read from July 21 to July 22
Rating: ★★ out of 5
A bog-standard sword and sorcery piece gussied up with trappings of what we would now call Old Mars. An unpleasant macho man hero, a cowardly and greedy but ultimately reliable sidekick, a haughty princess whose will and inner strength the macho man immediately wants to break, an ophidian evil race whom our hero immediately hates without knowing why -- this could pass undetected within the output of Howard or Burroughs or Lin Carter (though Brackett's unadorned competence sets her worlds above Carter's tedious and turgid output). The more of Brackett I read, the more I realize, to my dismay, that The Long Tomorrow is the intelligent and sensitive outlier, at least when it comes to her longer work. A pity.
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