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Dray Prescot #38-40
The Lohvian Cycle I (The Saga of Dray Prescot Omnibus, #11) (Lohvian Cycle, #1-3)
On the magnificent and mysterious, beautiful and terrible world of Kregen, a planet orbiting Antares four-hundred light-years from Earth, much may be achieved and much lost. Far more than merely a strong sword arm is required for victory. Far more than a cunning and devious brain is needed to secure success. Having won his princess, Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains, and having become the Emperor of Vallia with Delia at his side as Empress, Dray Prescot has renounced the crown and throne. Any thoughts of a quiet life are foolish, as he well knows. Among the many problems besetting him, the most important are uniting the lands of Paz and beating off the viciously hostile raiders from over the curve of the sea, the feared and hated Shanks. Scorpio Sent by the Star Lords to save a life from a fire, Dray Prescot finds himself utterly helpless in a strange land. Confused and unable to move, he is cared for by Mevancy, a woman with a strange and wonderful secret. But why have the Star Lords left him there? Who is he expected to protect, and how is he supposed to do it? Flying a kite one moment, battling through an inferno the next, Prescot is flung headlong into fresh adventures under the mingled streaming lights of the Suns of Scorpio. Scorpio The Star Lords require that a high spirited lady called Kirsty be queen, and have ordered Leone killed so that she cannot return through reincarnation. With the aid of the kregoinya Mevancy nal Chardaz and of the kregoinye Caspar the Peaker, and with the assistance of Trylon Kuong and of Llodi the Voice, Prescot decides to risk all to defy the all-powerful Star Lords... Scorpio Dray Prescot must answer to the Star Lords for his disobedience. But the Star Lords argue over him and Dray is dropped accidentally in a walled garden. He is lost. Even the Star Lords don't know where he is. He knows he is on the splendid if horrific planet of Kregen, and in the continent of Loh, but nothing is familiar. He must find his way back to Makilorn, and from there to Tarankar to train an army to repel the Shanks...
- GenresScience Fiction Fantasy
390 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 20, 2017
DAW Books published 36 Dray Prescot titles between Dec. '72 and Dec. '85 until the 37th appeared almost two and a half years later (Apr. '88). If you think 36 published books in 13 years is an achievement, prolific author Kenneth Bulmer also wrote 60 other books in that same 156 month time frame. From 1991-1997 he wrote 15 additional new Prescot novels for a German publisher bringing the number of books in the series to 52; a 53rd underway when Bulmer passed at 84.
Those last 15 volumes have never been available in English in any paper format until now. Eight of the 15 could be had on everything from floppy disks in the early 90s to the ebooks of today. Finally six of them (#38 to #43) are available in two paperback omnibus volumes: THE LOHVIAN CYCLE, parts I and II. The only criticism I can think of is THE LOHVIAN CYCLE is a reboot of the Kregen/Antares/Scorpio series, not a continuation of the final DAW volume #37 Warlord of Antares. That being said, there are lots of other, earlier gaps evident in the saga due to the device of missing tape recordings in the life story of Dray Prescot. Bulmer delivered a wonderful Burroughs Martian-style interplanetary romance series to Donald Wollheim's DAW line, writing approximately three slender Prescot paperbacks a year, all of them crammed with action, flora and fauna.
When Wollheim became so ill his daughter had to oversee DAW's publishing, she cancelled Bulmer's contract in 1988---along with John Norman's. E.C. Tubbs's longtime Dumarest series got the chop a few years earlier. Another good ol' boy from Ace like Bulmer, Tubbs published the first eight Dumarest novels as Ace Doubles before also moving over to DAW, who published 23 more of them. Dumarest and Prescot were pet projects of Wollheim's, supposedly their advances were never earned back in sales. Readers however have a nice sci-fi legacy from Bulmer and Tubbs in the form of two series so lengthy they perforce become comparable to episodic TV when it's good. The interlaced long-running story arcs of both series are infrastructures of preposterously colorful fictional locales, wicked cults of doom, an obligatory abundance of desirable underclothed females and fun baddies who recur time and again. Interstellar space traveler Earl Dumarest is as tough as Mike Hammer and only wants to find his way back to Earth.
Earth is, ironically, the last place Dray Prescot wants to be. For purposes never explained in 52 books the agency of the Star Lords, those omnipotent unseen inhuman deities who communicate with humans via talking eagles and hissing chairs, among other things, teleport Dray Prescot to Kregen 400 light years from earth. Once there, the poor guy gets involved in hundreds of sword fights.
Bulmer was an inspired master of making up names: names for people, for weapons, alien races, animals, dinosaurs, religions, organizations, moons, stars, suns, cities, countries, continents, naval and aerial vessels. He made up some great expressions too and had a fully realized vision of the multi-layered world he'd invented. I daresay he created over a thousand names and sayings throughout the series, the latter Prescot books take on a language all their own and they're damned near incomprehensible if you don't know the nomenclature.
Those last 15 volumes have never been available in English in any paper format until now. Eight of the 15 could be had on everything from floppy disks in the early 90s to the ebooks of today. Finally six of them (#38 to #43) are available in two paperback omnibus volumes: THE LOHVIAN CYCLE, parts I and II. The only criticism I can think of is THE LOHVIAN CYCLE is a reboot of the Kregen/Antares/Scorpio series, not a continuation of the final DAW volume #37 Warlord of Antares. That being said, there are lots of other, earlier gaps evident in the saga due to the device of missing tape recordings in the life story of Dray Prescot. Bulmer delivered a wonderful Burroughs Martian-style interplanetary romance series to Donald Wollheim's DAW line, writing approximately three slender Prescot paperbacks a year, all of them crammed with action, flora and fauna.
When Wollheim became so ill his daughter had to oversee DAW's publishing, she cancelled Bulmer's contract in 1988---along with John Norman's. E.C. Tubbs's longtime Dumarest series got the chop a few years earlier. Another good ol' boy from Ace like Bulmer, Tubbs published the first eight Dumarest novels as Ace Doubles before also moving over to DAW, who published 23 more of them. Dumarest and Prescot were pet projects of Wollheim's, supposedly their advances were never earned back in sales. Readers however have a nice sci-fi legacy from Bulmer and Tubbs in the form of two series so lengthy they perforce become comparable to episodic TV when it's good. The interlaced long-running story arcs of both series are infrastructures of preposterously colorful fictional locales, wicked cults of doom, an obligatory abundance of desirable underclothed females and fun baddies who recur time and again. Interstellar space traveler Earl Dumarest is as tough as Mike Hammer and only wants to find his way back to Earth.
Earth is, ironically, the last place Dray Prescot wants to be. For purposes never explained in 52 books the agency of the Star Lords, those omnipotent unseen inhuman deities who communicate with humans via talking eagles and hissing chairs, among other things, teleport Dray Prescot to Kregen 400 light years from earth. Once there, the poor guy gets involved in hundreds of sword fights.
Bulmer was an inspired master of making up names: names for people, for weapons, alien races, animals, dinosaurs, religions, organizations, moons, stars, suns, cities, countries, continents, naval and aerial vessels. He made up some great expressions too and had a fully realized vision of the multi-layered world he'd invented. I daresay he created over a thousand names and sayings throughout the series, the latter Prescot books take on a language all their own and they're damned near incomprehensible if you don't know the nomenclature.
February 6, 2020
The teenage boy inside of me is thrilled that DP #38-53 are available in English. The adult me is sad at how bad they are.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews