The Shaver Mystery Book Five!

We get three more wacky novellas by Richard S. Shaver, sagas about the underground world which Shaver insisted actually existed beneath you and me. 

"The Quest of Brail" features a heroic leader of an underworld kingdom who is himself slave to debased secret leaders. He seeks a way to free himself and his people from their hold and an invasion from outer space by The Horde offers him his chance. Recruiting some of the disaffected members of the Horde he uses a remarkably fast fleet of ships to escape into space with as many of his subjects as he can safely steal away. In the leader Brail we find one of the best figures in these yarns so far, a goodly man who seeks genuinely to help others as well as himself. He's a virtuous leader, thoughtful and strategic. This is an overall very positive tale. 

"Slaves of the Worm" is very much back to Earth, beneath it in fact. This is a grim sword and sorcery saga. A bizarre culture ruled by enormous slugs with "human" faces seeks to dominate all around them. This is one of the more lurid Shaver stories I've read so far. But also a story filled with the most erotic descriptions, especially of the dark queenly figure of Vana. Shaver lavishes a lot of words describing her beauty and to good effect. One big problem is the eventual hero and the nominal villain have very similar names which caused me confusion early on. I was put in mind of Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone stories since the protagonist is a man conflicted as he is of evil attempting to do some measure of good. There's a touch of Snow White in this tale as well. 

"The Fall of Lemuria" is a tale which is set in the same time as Shaver's debut yarn "I Remember Lemuria". But where that story followed Mulan Muton and his love Arl into space to find help to save their land, this tale stays on the planet. Our heroine is the serpent woman Maiya and when attacks break out on Mu, she takes heroic steps to forestall the war. Her land of Serpena is saved by great sacrifice. This tale also gives us a glimpse of the early settlement of Earth by the peoples who would become the inhabitants of Atlan and Serpena. This story has a rather fundamental nature to it and is not as invigorating as the best of Shaver's material can be. 

More Shaver Mystery next time as we tumble into volume six. 

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