Sorcery in Shad: Tales of the Primal Land, Volume 3

Tarra Khash, Lumley's barbarian hero, meets and defeats no end of wizards, good and evil, discovering the hard way that some villains aren't so bad after all, in the mellow third and final collection of primal land adventures (after The House of Cthulhu and Tarra Khash: Hrossak! ). In a typical sequence, the vampire bite of Orbiquita, an ugly, leathery and long-lived lamia, has dire consequences; Tarra loses interest in women just as Orbiquita's passion for him is further inflamed. For Tarra's sake, Orbiquita surrenders her near-immortality as a lamia to become a beautiful if short-lived woman. While Lumley takes too long to wind up the action, he closes with an appropriately happy climax. (Sept.)