Crown of the Serpent

This is a pulp trilogy that deserves a new edition. Crown of the Serpent is escapism in the best sense of the word: Allen L. Wold is excellent at creating tangible worlds for his characters to explore. The main weakness of the series is that the characters are somewhat flat compared to their wonderful surroundings, but this book is too much fun not to read.

The second instalation of young Rikards adventures as a Gesta (a lifestyle that involves adventure and danger)is almost as grabbing as his first adventure in Jewels of the Dragon. Picked up by local police in Nowarth, for tresspassing (while trading 'liberated' artifacts). It would seem Rikard and his companion Darcy, have come to the end of their adventuring, until long-time friend and federal agent Leonid Polski saves their skins to recruit them for a top-secret, incredibly dangerous mission. Rikard accepts the mission to try to find and stop the mass murderers after seeing the slaughter the pirates wreaked on the planet Natimarie. From there Rikard sets forth on a new kind of adventure, a legal one, involving artificial planets milenia old, artifacts and species long thought extinct, and quite a few unpleasant suprises including a race of acient warriors (thought to have vanishied eons ago) infamous for their cruelty and goals of galactic domination. This book was incredibly hard to put down, once I got started reading it, and a definate read for anyone who enjoyed Jewels of the Dragon.