Sword and Planet Fiction at its best. Fast-paced entertaining reads. Rereading this series nearly 50 years after the first book's publication, I was surprised at how well they held up and at the erudition and learning of the author. For "pulp" fiction, the vocabulary is rich and rewarding to logophiles like myself. I purchased the ebook omnibus editions for my reread of the series to facilitate dictionary and web access to definitions and references to 19th century history and the Age of Sail -- since I am a student of history as well. However, this is not necessary for the causal reader who desires only the pleasure of the experience, just as enjoying a delicious meal does not require knowing the precise recipe. The marvelous interior illustrations are the added seasoning (and only present in these original paperback editions). ( )

This is the 3rd installment of 52 [only 47 translated to English so far] in the Dray Prescot series. I am definitely in this for the long haul. The stories in of themselves are relatively simple and entertaining. Loads of hack and slash, very little magic and even flying mounts and tons of fighting.

Once again Dray is on the hunt for his Delia, she is found, captured, found and then captured, in a sense once again. This guy never gets a break. I feel like he should already know his time is limited with her once he does finally find Delia and just plan ahead for their next inevitable separation? ( )

The third installment of Akers' long, long Kregen series is absolutely formulaic sword and planet fiction. The book features beast-men, airships, exhaustive detail of exotic military technology, a kidnapped princess, a predatory queen, an arena battle with a monster, and heroic nudity. Protagonist Dray Prescott's companion-in-arms is Seg Segutorio, a name that recalls the Tars Tarkas of Barsoom, although Seg is more conventionally humanoid than the green Martian. The bird steeds that are called tarns in the Gor books feature here as multiple species, including corth and impiters.

One little innovation: A footnote points out a lack of continuity with the previous volumes, and opines that some of Prescott's memoir has been lost. It's a sort of retnoncon! Along with a different allusion to missing tapes in the second book, this may have been the author's scheme to open up gaps in the narrative that might later be filled with further writings.

Towards the middle of this book I was getting kind of bored of planet Kregen (pretty unforgivable in a book of this sort!), but the pace picked up toward the end, and I genuinely enjoyed the last two or three chapters. I guess I'll read some more Dray Prescott, but not very soon.