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Friday, March 2, 2007

Zimmer - The Lost Prince and King Chondos Ride (The Dark Border series)

The Dark Border duology. Incl: The Lost Prince, and King Chondos' Ride. Paul Edwin Zimmer. Playboy Paperbacks. 1982. I recently bagged a re-read of Zimmer's fantasy duology. Outwardly these are excellent works of drama, intrigue, and war. Inwardly, for those who care to look, there are themes of love and death, of honor, friendship, loyalty, and redemption. Zimmer, brother to famed author Marion Zimmer Bradley, was known more as a poet, swordsman, and scholar. These were his first novels, and in them he created a major work of fantasy. The dialogue is visceral, the character development crisp, the action scenes stirring, the drama absorbing. His following work did not live up to this excellent beginning. But in these works we have an underrated duo of epic fantasy that deserves to be read and studied.

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