The Tritonian Ring

A tour de force. When good hack writers do their best you should expect something very readable and this book certainly is. Fantasy usually comes in 2 flavors: 1) The boy who learns better and gets the girl, the kingdom or whatever. 2) The Hobbit or King Arthur rides again. Here you get something entirely different. You get the story of 1) The king, the god or whoever who is told that something or somebody will be his/it's downfall, tries to destroy the problem (ie. the hero) and in doing this causes the very disaster he/she/it is trying to avert. The story is 2-3000 years old, but it is still a good one if properly handled. 2) The coming of the iron and the going of the old gods and the old magic. 3) One of DeCamps usual reluctant/practical heroes (or intelligent cowards) doing the best he can with what he has. The hero gets the girl and one suspects that eventually he will also get the kingdom, but at the end of the book the hero leaves the kingdom and his not very nice brother to one another in order to live with the girl (who has a very nice kingdom of her own). If you like grown up fantasy this is a Must Read.