I found this second of Lin Carter's "Green Star" books more enjoyable than the first in all respects but one. The characters were more interesting, including the protagonist, who this time did not have the conveniently preserved soul-less body of a mighty-thewed hero to inhabit. Instead, he took on the life of an orphaned savage. There were elements of ancient civilizations and super-science which helped leaven the sword-and-planet a bit. As before, it is a straightforward action story where the interstellar travel is of a sort of old-fashioned psychic variety. I especially enjoyed an apparently gratuitous trip to Earth's moon, where the narrator witnessed an enigmatic artifact.

The one feature I didn't so much like was the cliff-hanger ending. There is, however, an editorial epilogue, where Carter applies the traditional documentary conceit of the genre, and explains that the next volume will pick up directly from this arbitrary break in the narrative. I was, in fact, slightly consoled.

I was very unimpressed by Luis Dominguez's interior illustrations to this edition, although his cover art is sort of fun.

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

Wildside Press has recently been producing Lin Carter�??s books in audio format and, since I read the first of his GREEN STAR series on my Kindle last year, I picked up the second book, When the Green Star Calls, on audio. These novels are short planetary SF adventures similar to the tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

In the first volume, Under the Green Star, we met our narrator who has been crippled since childhood. After discovering the ancient Tibetan eckankar, a method of freeing the soul from the body so that it can travel unhindered, he found an exotic planet with a green star, entered the body of one of the planetƒ??s ancient heroes, and fell in love with a princess. While defending her, he died and was abruptly brought back to his unsatisfactory earthly body.

Some time has passed when we meet him again in When the Green Star Calls. This time when he travels to the green star planet, he enters the dying body of a teenage boy. He hopes to find out if the princess he loves is alive, captured, or dead, but he doubts sheƒ??ll be interested in his new youthful self.

I knew what I was in for with When the Green Star Calls ƒ?? a fast pulpy adventure requiring few working synapses, so I read it when I was in the mood for that sort of thing, and it was indeed entertaining. Besides the beautiful scenery, thereƒ??s also a decaying city to explore, mutant vegetable vampires, man-eating insects, and mad scientists.

Lin Carterƒ??s narrative is sometimes repetitive, the dialogue is sometimes stilted, and the writing is sometimes overdone to the point of hilarity. For example, a map is a ƒ??cartographic guideƒ? and a hairless man is not simply ƒ??bald,ƒ? heƒ??s ƒ??devoid of hirsute adornment.ƒ? And then there are comical sentences like this one: ƒ??...he had an indescribable accent I can only describe as the Laonese equivalent of cockney.ƒ? I think these little kinks make the story even more fun ƒ?? itƒ??s just so pulpy.

Wildside Press is new to audiobooks. Theyƒ??re using Audibleƒ??s new do-it-yourself ACX system with narrators Iƒ??ve never heard of, so I was concerned about the quality of the production. At least in this case, I neednƒ??t have worried. When the Green Star Calls was narrated by Joel Richards, who isnƒ??t going to be declared my favorite narrator any time soon, but who was quite pleasant to listen to nonetheless. Some of Mr. Richardsƒ?? dialogue was stilted, but that could very well have been Lin Carterƒ??s fault. Overall, this was a nice performance and I will definitely be picking up some more of Wildside Pressƒ??s offerings at Audible. When the Green Star Calls ended, kind of annoyingly, on a cliffhanger, so Iƒ??ve already downloaded the next adventure: By the Light of the Green Star. ( )

This is Burrough's style fantasy - heroic fantasy on other worlds. Not complicated or fancy, just plain hero rescues the princess stuff. Not great, not bad either. ( )

Book 2 in the Green Star series. Follows Under The Green Star, followed by By The Light Of The Green Star.

"UNKNOWN WORLD FOR CONQUEST!

"To him, his native Earth was a prison of the mind and body. For him, only the lure of the wonder world that revolved in the rays of the nameless green star was worth the struggle to live. And finally the call came...

"But awaiting him there was only the body of a primitive youth, while the city of his beloved princess was far away. And once revived, he found himself the puppet of a half-mad experimenter in immortality and the companion of the last living monster of a race that had once been ruler of the world.

"Lin Carter, master of fantasy, has produced another marvelous novel in the Burroughs-Merritt tradition to stand alondside his UNDER THE GREEN STAR."

Book 2 of the 'Green Star' series sees our astral travelling hero returning to the Green Star world to track down his princess. Inconveniently he now occupies a different body and is in a different part of the planet.

Style is very episodic as Carter strings a number of short story style plots together and these vary in quality. Cliffhanger ending leads into Book 3. ( )