PIERS ANTHONY – Sos the Rope. Pyramid X-1890. Paperback unique; 1st printing, October 1968. Cowl artwork by Jack Gaughan. Serialized earlier in The Journal of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July-Aug-Sept 1968, Collected in Battle Circle (Avon, paperback, 1978).
A wierd triangle shaped between two males and a lady turns into the important thing to the way forward for a post-war semi-feudal society, There are the soldiers whose issues are solved by the power of arms, by trial by fight. And there are the crazies, who provide the traditions of studying and the previous.
Any type of unifying management is discouraged by the key underground producers of all provides, and it’s Sos’ good friend Sol who threatens to offer that management, with the assistance of Sos, which might upset the stability of this precarious society. Sola is the spouse of Sol, who bears the daughter of Sos. And it’s Sos who is shipped to finish Sol’s management, and who then turns into the one who should be destroyed, What he has constructed, he should additionally destroy.
A dilemma, unresolved. To attempt for the advantages of civilization once more, or to take care of the current as a result of with it civilization brings destruction? What to do with an empire that can’t face up to those that have the ability and want to preserve it for themselves?
A lot rather more than for Lin Carter’s “swords and sorcery.”
Ranking: *****
— March 1969.
