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Title: Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson ISBN: 0-671-72186-0 Publisher: Baen Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 1993 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $4.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (16 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Fantasy that's believable
Comment: The thing I've always liked about Anderson's forays into fantasy, is that he manages to maintain that hard edge of reality throughout the work. Anderson's characters don't stumble around fairy land tripping over magic junk that they're going to happen to need in the next chapter like in some of the feebler fantasy on the market. Anderson gives his hero all the discomforts associated with running around in armor, the confusion of a modern character stuck in a parallel universe that he is having trouble making sense of and yet, manages to make a detailed, sociologically believable parallel universe without resorting to some of the cheaper tricks you too often see in sword and sorcery stuff. When something happens, it makes sense, even if it's fantastical at the same time. Anderson knows his sociology, history and his physics quite well. He's one of the brightest practitioners of the science fiction/fantasy art form and way under-appreciated. This is one of my favorites!
Tom Kin
Rating: 5
Summary: A 20th century man fights chaos in a world full of wonders.
Comment: "Three Hearts and Three Lions" by Poul Anderson is a wonderful tale of a 20th century man who must fight chaos and evil in land full of magic and oddities in order to keep his dream alive. I personaly found my self lost in this book of high adventure as unimaginable events unfolded before my eyes. A great book for the first time "fantasy" reader, and for the experienced as well.
Rating: 3
Summary: A nice, quick escape...
Comment: "Three Hearts & Three Lions," published in the early 1950s, certainly proved to be an influential work in the fantasy genre. It is a clear inspiration to writers such as R.A Salvatore (see his Spearwielder series), and many other authors with close ties to TSR. (The Dungeons & Dragons concept of a troll is taken almost verbatim from the sinister creature that appears here.) Poul Anderson writes with a generally favorable prose while relating the tale of Holger Carlson, a Dane who, amidst the chaos of World War II, is transported to a strange, alternate reality where magic is commonplace and he is destined to become the realm's champion in an epic struggle against the forces of Chaos. Some interesting characters crop up (but dialogue is not Anderson's strong point), and a few of the brief, dislocated adventures that somehow manage to appear in so short a read are worthwhile affairs, but there's no overriding sense of purpose in "Three Hearts & Three Lions." The battle between the forces of Law and Chaos is vague at best, and never comes to a head. Female characters are sexual objects with generally irritating personalities (it was the '50s, after all!), and relationships are scarcely solid enough to involve the reader in any significant way. (One character's death is unearned and out of place in the otherwise light-hearted yarn, and is immediately followed by merrymaking that further compounds the problem.) Also, despite several attempts to compare the fantasy royale battle in the novel to the struggles of the second World War, I found few actual parallels that made any sense or even hinted at the same urgency (How could they, after all?). Despite these faults, "Three Hearts & Three Lions" is a nice look back at the genre before it was stolen by blatant commerciality, and it's one of the first in the subgenre of "modern guy (or gal) transported to a magical netherworld to ultimately save the day." The late Anderson offers a nice, quick escape that's very worthwhile to this day.
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Title: Operation Chaos : A Novel by Poul Anderson ISBN: 0312872429 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 08 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The High Crusade by Poul Anderson ISBN: 0743475283 Publisher: I Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: The KING OF YS (TRADE PAPERBACK) by Anderson & anderson ISBN: 0671877291 Publisher: Baen Books Pub. Date: 01 July, 1996 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Hoka Hoka Hoka by Gordon Dickson, Poul Anderson ISBN: 0671577743 Publisher: Baen Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Mother of Kings by Poul Anderson ISBN: 0765345021 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 20 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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