The Tower of Zanid: by L. Sprague DeCamp
The Cover:
This is one of the books that My Special Lady bought for me last time she went to the used bookstore. I really like the combination of science fiction and fantasy elements in this cover. there's a green guy, and a dragon horse and a wizards tower looking thing, and what appears to be some sort of mobile pill box or metal tent in the distance. The picture on the cover of this book is supposed to be the climactic battle towards the end of the novel but.... that's just not what I imagined when I read it. For one thing, the battle took place 4 days march from the town of Zanid, where the eponymous tower is located. So why is it visible in this picture? Well I guess it's too much for me to ask that the cover art of a sci fi book from the 60's be accurate to the actual events in the book.
The Content:
The Tower of Zanid by L Sprague DeCamp is about 128 pages long. It should tell you something about the quality of the writing that it took me almost two weeks to read this book. in fact it took me about two weeks to read the first 50 pages and then I seriously contemplated giving up. Instead of giving up, I put on my rally helm and manned up and read the last 70 pages in one day. Plot of this book revolves around Anthony Fallon, the deposed king of the country of Zamba and his quest to make enough money to raise an army to return to Zamba. Note that it is not about him actually raising the army... just trying to make money. You know, there is a story about me trying to make money too. It's called 8 hours of my day every day of my life. I was unaware of how boring money can be until I read this book. That's right. This book was so terrible that I have renounced worldly possessions for fear that I too will be that boring.
I don't want to rag on the book completely so I will say this, the setting of the book, (the planet Krishna) is actually pretty interesting, and it is clear that the author put a lot of effort into creating a believable planet. I will not go into a great amount of detail but basically Krishna is an earthlike planet that has been discovered by humans, humans are free to visit it, but because of an technological embargo they are not allowed to bring any human devices that are technologically superior to devices of the natives. This explains why the dudes on the cover have spears and bows.
Over the course of the novel some Krishnans decide they want to gain respect from the humans (and destroy a neighboring country in the process) so the set about creating a new weapon in the basement of the tower of Zanid. Anthony Fallon is hired to sneak into the Tower and find out what they are making, if he is successful he will make a lot of money which is his goal... as well as every person's ever. He successfully infiltrates the tower... or at least its basement, and suprise, the top secret superweapon the Krishnans are developing is flintlock muskets. Anthony escapes the tower (basement) and promptly gets screwed out of his reward money. So not only is this a story where the characters only motivation is money, he never actually gets any money. I liked Krishna as a setting but I think maybe a better author should have handled it.
I would like to point out that reading terrible books like this is half the fun of writing a old scifi book cover review blarg though.
Next Week: Special not silly cover week,
Decipher (at the recommendation of my co workers)
Two weeks from now: Return to silly covers with special non sci fi book :
Gatling 3: Border War
