The Dark World (Ace F-327) [Mass Market Paperback]

Henry Kuttner (Author), Gray Morrow (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1965

Ace F-327 first book publication of this short novel, which made its first appearance in Startling Stories, Summer 1946. An alternate Earth story where Edward Bond is thrust into a world where science and sorcery still battle. Inspiration, perhaps for Zelazny's "Amber" series?

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 126 pages
• Publisher: Ace Books; First Edition edition (1965)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000NS1DBE
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 3.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,053,801 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars YET ANOTHER WINNING FANTASY FROM KUTTNER & MOORE, March 27, 2007

By 

s.ferber (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dark World (Mass Market Paperback)

1946 was a very good year indeed for sci-fi's foremost husband-and-wife writing team, Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore. Besides placing a full dozen stories (including the acknowledged classic "Vintage Season") into various magazines of the day, the pair also succeeded in having published three short novels in those same pulps. The first, "The Fairy Chessmen," which was released in the January and February issues of "Astounding Science-Fiction," was a remarkable combination of hardheaded modernist sci-fi and almost hallucinatory reality twists. "Valley of the Flame," from the March issue of "Startling Stories," was an exciting meld of jungle adventure, Haggardian lost-world story and unique fantasy. And that summer, in "Startling Stories" again, the team came out with "The Dark World," a work that is pretty much a "hard" fantasy with some slight scientific leavening. In this one, the American flier Edward Bond is whisked from the Pacific theatre during WW2 and transported to the eponymous Dark World, an alternate Earth that has diverged from its parent in space as well as time. His counterpart on the Dark World, Ganelon, head of a coven of mutated overlords who are busy keeping that realm subjugated, is sent to our Earth with Bond's memories. The book's plot is difficult to synopsize, and gets a bit complicated when Ganelon is brought back to the Dark World sometime later, his body now housing two distinct minds and personalities. Thus, the understandably mixed-up warlock can't quite decide whether or not to help his fellow "Covenanters" wipe out the forest-dwelling rebels, or join those rebels and destroy the Coven, not to mention the dreaded, sacrifice-demanding entity known as Llyr. Though called the Coven, Ganelon's fellows number only four, and include Medea, a beautiful vampire who feeds on life energies; Matholch, a lycanthrope; Edeyrn, a cowled, childlike personage whose power the authors choose not to reveal until the novel's end; and Ghast Rhymi, an ancient magus whose origin really did surprise this reader. Peopled with colorful characters as it is, and featuring a nicely involved plot and ample scenes of battle, sacrifice, magic and spectacle, this little book (the whole thing runs to a mere 126 pages) really does please. That small scientific admixture that I mentioned earlier takes the form of rational explanations for the vampire, werewolf and Edeyrn phenomena; these explanations, while not exactly deep or technical, do tend to make the fantastic characters on display here slightly more, well, credible. But for the most part, "The Dark World" is a somber fantasy, and a darn good one, at that. Not for nothing was it selected for inclusion (as was "Valley of the Flame") in James Cawthorn and Michael Moorcock's excellent overview volume "Fantasy: The 100 Best Books." "I consider the work of Henry Kuttner to be the finest science fantasy ever written," says Marion Zimmer Bradley in a blurb on the front cover of the 1965 Ace paperback (pictured above, and with a cover price of 40 cents) that I just finished, and readers of "The Dark World" will probably not feel inclined to give her argument.