It is safe to say I did not like this one bit. Maybe back in the day it was cutting edge fantasy (though I highly doubt it) but today it's absolutely painful.

I'm not sure what's worst. The fact that all the women (the few that there are) are stupid or evil. Or that all the black people, as far as I can tell, are the evil minions of the evil woman sorceress. Or that far too many men move with "catlike" grace. Or is it the most dreadful poetic prophecy I've ever come across in decades of fantasy reading? (Seriously, leave poetry alone if you can't do it; bad poetry is infinitely worse than bad prose and this is dire.) Maybe it's the sudden, consistent appearance of previously unsuspected and helpful magical powers when one of the protagonists is in a bad spot. Or the related implication that most things require little effort and can be learned easily, or recovered from in bare hours. (The example that had me rolling in my airplane seat? "Morgan .... had gone through virtually every book in Brion's private collection, and most of the general reference in the public section". It took him half an hour. I can only imagine that this private/public library consisted of the complete works of Beatrix Potter, and even then Morgan was speed-reading.)

But no. No. I know what's the most cringe-inducing aspect of this book. It's the fact that the evil sorceress is, more times than I can count, referred to as "my pet" by the slack-jawed yokel that is her chief patsy. If the appearance of "my pet" were part of a drinking game I'd have been plastered halfway through the book. Why didn't I make this a drinking game?

Anyway, God help me, I read this because it was on the shortlist for the 1971 Mythopoeic Award, which thankfully it did not win.