The Sword Of Rhiannon

Author: Leigh Brackett

Leigh Brackett was the queen of the planetary romance, indeed her vivid and highly coloured work practically defined the form. She set many of her stories on the same Mars, a venerable realm giving way to desert and populated by a variety of humanoid races. Of all these stories, the best is probably this novel. Brackett also wrote crime novels, and often used criminal adventurers as characters in her science fiction. The Sword of Rhiannon is no exception. Matthew Carse is an archaeologist turned thief who is engaged to steal a precious relic, the Sword of Rhiannon, from an ancient Martian tomb. But when he enters the tomb, Carse finds himself swept back millions of years to the time of the Martian Sea Kings. Captured and chained as a galley slave, Carse's knowledge of the Sword of Rhiannon is the key to saving the planet. Leigh Brackett is underappreciated today, but she is still one of the most fluent and entertaining of writers from the golden age, and her planetary romances, of which this is the best, remain fresh, exciting and surprisingly charming.