Raymond's Reviews #112

I've been busy with my own book for months now, but I'm finally out from under and Raymond's Reviews will start appearing regularly once again -- but mostly short takes until I catch up. This is February releases #4.

%T The Lost City of Zork
%A Robin Bailey
%I Avon
%D February 1991
%O paperback, US$4.50
%P 300
%G 0-380-75389-8

This novel set in the world of Infocom's popular Zork fantasy game is just as much silly fun as one might expect, and a vast improvement indeed on George Alec Effinger's incoherent The Zork Chronicles (RR#70). The characters are stock and the setting is familiar, but the puns are delightfully awful and the in-jokes appropriate. Enjoy.

%T D'Shai
%A Joel Rosenberg
%I Berkeley/Ace
%D February 1991
%O paperback, US$4.95
%P 327
%G 0-441-15751-3

This is a fine, original fantasy (first of a series) reminiscent in some ways of Steven Brust's Taltos novels but clearly not derivative of them. In D'Shai, a troubled kingdom somewhat resembling medieval Japan, society is rigidly caste-ridden. Each cast has a `kazuh', or gift of power. The protagonist is born into an acrobatic troupe, but does not have an acrobat's kazuh, nor any of the other fifty-one kinds his society recognizes. He will, eventually, find out what it is; but he must survive, and solve a murder which shatters his life, first. Very tasty stuff, and recommended.