Book 3 in the Thongor series. Follows Thongor Of Lemuria, followed by Thongor In The City Of Magicians.

The third instalment in Lin Carter's flagship Sword, Sorcery & Pseudo-Science series offers some improvement over the first two. The story opens with the evil Druids overthrown in instalment two hatching a plan to kidnap Thongor's wife and son and ransom them in return for Thongor butting out of their affairs in the future. The plan goes awry and only the hero's wife Sumia is taken with Thongor in hot pursuit and no clues left for his associates to follow.

Fortunately the Wizard of Lemuria, Sharajsha is able to to look into his crystal ball (or whatever) and kindly provides a summary of the first two chapters of the book so a rescue mission can be mounted. This kind of lazy magical plot device is fairly typical of Carter who is honing his 'craft' in this effort.

The book progresses along largely predictable lines introducing a race of nomadic indigo giants called the Rmoahal to provide both enemy and ally as well as 'sithurls' or Lemurian power crystals whose properties will be expanded in future instalments to provide another plot device. Of course the Lemurian flying boats appear again as a convenient means of getting Thongor in and out of trouble.

Well below the standard set by Carter's inspirations Robert E Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs but not the worst of its genre I've seen and at 150 pages it doesn't require a great commitment. ( )