More forgettable sci-fantasy pap, this time by Poul "Tau Zero" Anderson, who also wrote "The Enemy Stars". But I only got half way through this one. What finally did it for me was the not the cardboardness of the characters, but their inability to be even vaguely intelligent: for example, when left in the darkness at night, our lead decides without thinking to run as quickly as possibly, inevitably falling over rocks and hurting himself and getting lost. And so on. I think that if you're writing an actual novel, you need to do better at thinking of ways in which your characters don't win immeadiately; this was just too unimaginative.The storyline itself is sort-of OK in a very meh way, featuring "magic" as actual techology, but done in a fashion I could not like; with no verve or panache, nothing to what Jack Vance might have provided.
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