The Sword of Rhiannon

Picked as the book of the month from Sword&Laser book club. There's not really much to say about this book. It was a quick read, fast-paced, and overall fun.

It's old-school Sci-fi, with a man with a destiny bigger than him, a damsel somewhat in distress/that wants to be saved (even if she doesn't know that), and a villain(?) that everyone is happy to hate and fear.

Like it was stated in the podcast for the book club, it is a great book to read on an afternoon at the beach.

This story is definitely pulp fiction and written in an older style, but it's fun. It would probably make a good ‘made for TV' movie.

Old school swashbuckling - on Mars! Although this definitely feels like a product of its time, it makes an interesting change from more modern science fiction.

This made moving stuff to my new flat all day much more bearable :)

For classic sci-fi this was quite an easy read (listen) for me. It also suffers for this though as the characters are fairly one-dimensional as is the plot. But this is from the era of pulp sci-fi and should be judged accordingly.

This book reminded me a lot of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom trilogy, which Brackett cites as one of her inspirations. However, where the Barsoom trilogy is rather soured for me by overt sexism and rather dated political ideas, Sword of Rhiannon is kind of an interesting SF time capsule. Written by a woman, it also features women in positions of power (although with some very dated ideas about relationships between men and women). The hero is pretty flat, but I did enjoy Boghaz who I kept imagine being played by John Rhys Davies.

There's high sea adventure, sword-fighting, and eldritch magicks which combine for a fun story if not one of my all time favorites.