Customer Reviews

Earth's Last Citadel

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This story begins in the deserts of Tunisia. World War 2 rages over the country and Alan Drake, an American Army Intelligence man, is struggling to complete his latest mission. His job is to get the Scots scientist Sir Colin Douglas out of the hands of the Nazis and to Allied safety. The two fugitives are making their journey cross-country be foot. They are pursued by two Nazi agents: Karen Martin, a sly, ruthless but charming woman of mixed races, and Mike Smith, an Americanized German with a history in racketeering and a strong instinct for killing. All four simultaneously pass over the crest of a ridge and come upon each other, but more importantly come upon a strange ovoid-shaped craft, which is half buried in the earth in a crater. The craft is glowing with heat like a meteorite, but its surface is perfectly smooth and unpitted as if its furious plunge from the sky has left it unharmed. The two parties draw weapons and a standoff occurs, but suddenly, as if commanded by telepathic control, all four walk into the strange craft. The craft buries itself in the ground and Alan Drake is dimly aware of strange 'dreams', of an alien creature hovering in a doorway, and of time passing. When all four awake they find themselves transported far into the distant future. What strange adventures and what dangers await the four twentieth century travelers? Will they ever return to their own time?

C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner are two famous authors of the 'Classic Era' (1930s to 1950s) of science fiction writing. Neither is remembered much today, though they are both well worth reading. The two authors independently established their careers as fiction writers, then married in 1940, after which they often wrote as a team. This novel is one of their early team efforts and it manages to successfully combine Moore's high-adventure style with Kuttner's "more cerebral storytelling." The story moves along at a quick pace: we hardly get used to one circumstance before we are thrust into some new occurrence. But there is depth also, especially when we read the brief, but interesting, descriptions of the various strange 'mind-states' that the hero, Alan Drake, experiences. Also of depth is Mike Smith's descent from cool, confident agent to fearful, crazy-man.

At around 150 pages this book is a quick read, and indeed it could possibly be describes as a novella. Moore and Kuttner wrote for the pulp magazine trade which, because of the limit of physical size, encouraged shorter works. <Earth's Last Citadel> (1943) is just the right size to curl up with for a weekend's entertainment.

Of course each book takes a place in the history of literature and this novel shows a number of similarities to the famous earlier book The Moon Pool by A. Merritt (1919). The chief of these similarities is a non-corporeal, 'energy' monster with mind-control capabilities. Moore and Kuttner have definitely put their own spin on these details and thus made the monster 'their own'. Anyone who has read the earlier book would not be disappointed by this one.

If you are interested in books which provide a lot of adventure with some depth of description and characterization this is the novel for you, but if you are looking for something like Nobel Prize winning fiction you should skip this one. This is basically good quality pulp and I found it very entertaining and am happy to award it four stars.