This is the second volume of the pulp-style fantasy/adventure series known as the World of Tiers. This time around, Wolff's evil father has kidnapped his beautiful wife Chryseis. To find her, he sets off through a series of hexacular gates, each of which takes him and his fractious siblings to a new and more challenging world where an endless series of traps, dangers, and
difficulties await. Will Wolff be able to rescue his wife from the horrible fate that awaits her? Was there ever any doubt?

The specific ploy Wolff comes up with to defeat the villain is pretty clever, and is probably the best part of the book, which overall is just the same old same old. Instead of displaced societies, this volume's worlds feature geographic problems that the group has to overcome in order to get through the next gate. The result is a lot less swordplay and a lot more death trekking, not really Farmer's forte. The excitement level is pretty low, and the suspense level is almost non-existent, since many will guess the kidnapper's secret well before it is revealed, and many more will have stopped caring long before then. Farmer's characters are painfully flat; some of the siblings are no more than cannon fodder, while even the more important characters just strike the same single note over and over. As a result, the reader never cares whether the party succeeds in their venture or not. (This reader was even tempted to start hoping the villain would just kill them all off and spare us all any more unpleasantness). Wolff is a capable leader and combatant, but he has few other human qualities of any interest, and his siblings are plain irritating. So even though this book starts much faster and has a stronger ending than its predecessor, there still isn't much to like about it. Younger readers who can handle brutal, pointless violence may find this book a welcome diversion, but so far, this is the weakest series Farmer has written. Will A Private Cosmos be any better? This reviewer is disinclined to even bother to find out.

In this peculiar novel Farmer takes us to a radically new locale - a heretofore unknown portion of the cosmos which its inhabitants refer to as "Hell". The protagonist (one certainly can't call him a hero) is Jack Cull, an agent of an investigative agency known as the Exchange. Amidst this living horror where no one seems to know any essential facts of existence, the Exchange seeks out information concerning the possibility of eternal salvation, or failing that, any rumors that might suffice to give some hope to the long-suffering inhabitants. Of primary concern is the mysterious being known only as "X", who appears to collect the bodies of the deceased, delivers a cryptic moral message to any bystanders, and then retires to engineer the resurrection of the dead. Thus death does not end, but only interrupts, the tedious existence of these god-forsaken creatures. Without giving away the many unique twists this story presents, Farmer gives us an extensive tour of the premises, a confrontation with X, and a major cataclysm, all within this rather short novel. This adds up to a book packed full of action, and brimming with radical, even bizarre, cosmological ideas. The characters, setting, and violent action are uniformly grim, depressing, only half-familiar, and often morally repugnant; all of which contribute to making this book an artistic success as a view of a world without any moral compass or any real hope of redemption. Regrettably, these same qualities make the book a rather depressing read, as the hopelessness and despair of the characters tends to bleed over onto the reader. Things happen so quickly that it's often hard to understand exactly what's going on, and of course no one ever understands why (they aren't supposed to, until the very end), keeping the reader more befuddled than engrossed. The conclusion of the novel, where the secrets are revealed, is certainly surprising enough, although like most theories of cosmology it may offend those with strict ideas about the nature of the universe, and it certainly is of no practical importance even if one believed in it. All in all, readers who are neither offended nor depressed by Farmer's vision may find it both clever and even amusing, although no one's life will ever be changed by it. But in the last analysis, though Farmer has done a magnificent job of integrating every facet of his novel to create a perfect picture of soulless emptiness, as with the artist who fills jars with urine, it's hard to believe that many people will actually enjoy the result.

I first read World of Tiers books in 1974, and enjoyd them over the years. As a whole, I would have given the series 5 stars, yet this one only rates 3.
The basic plot is that Kikaha and Annana have been tryng to escape from some universe for 15 years, and when they finally do, they meet up with their arch enemy, Red Orc. Farmer does bring the series to an end, but I think it was very contrived.
He does answer some questions from the earlier books, but I was left with the overwhelming question: why did I bother to buy the book in the first place?
Saying that, it is worth reading to find out how the series comes to an end.

Society is transformed by a device that allows communication with the souls of the dead in this science fiction/detective thriller by Phil Farmer. The so-called "Medium" is putatively the invention of entrepreneur Raymond Western, who has become extremely wealthy by guarding the secret of Medium's design, and charging exorbitant prices for its unique services. There are many skeptics, of course, especially in the religious and scientific communities, and one of the leaders of the opposition is Gordon Carfax, a hard-boiled private detective-turned-history professor who, for reasons of his own, suspects that the forces contacted through Medium might be something other than what is advertised. He is contacted by a beautiful young woman who claims that her deceased father was the real inventor of Medium, and the two set off on a desperate attempt to find the truth about what Medium is and who really developed it, before Western's men can silence them.

Farmer balances this far-out plot (the unlikely technological development of after-death communication is only the beginning) with down-to-earth characters whose actions display a day-to-day ordinariness and sometimes gritty realism that lends some much needed credibility. The story features sufficient action and plenty of wild new revelations to keep up the reader's interest, and surely fans of Farmer and the sci-fi/detective sub-genre will have fun reading this suspenseful novel.

On the down side, the ending is bitterly disappointing, and pretty much ruined the book for this reviewer. While Farmer's conclusion leaves the reader with some things to think about, the book neatly avoids most of the theosophical issues that a writer like Heinlein, say, would have mined 24-carat gold from. Perhaps what Farmer needs to do is sit down and write a good sequel, picking up from this book's clever, portentous, but thoroughly unsatisfying conclusion, and bringing the story to the kind of resolution that readers of this book deserve. Until he does, this novel really doesn't quite merit a recommendation.

Hi,

I submitted a review for this book last month. Why wasn't it posted?

Farmer's interest in the Tarzan stories of Burroughs is well known, and he has written his own stories in the past. This is not a Tarzan story, although it does involve a "savage" growing up among various jungle tribes. This book is extremely well written, with many fascinating passages throughout. In the end, Farmer still manages to weave a connection with the classic Burroughs tales. This one is worth a read for the quality writing alone, and may be among Farmer's best.

This book is comprised of three self-contained adventures, each of which was originally published separately. All three feature the same main character, a redoubtable airship officer named Greatheart Silver, and there is enough continuity between the three adventures to create the illusion of a novel, but not the actual impact of one. The first episode opens with Silver's fall from grace as an airship officer, then goes on to detail his revenge at a wild shootout. The Shootout is easily the most memorable section of the book; Farmer gives his playful imagination free rein in a reunion of major adventure heroes and villains from the past century, including not-so-subtle variations of Doc Savage, James Bond, the Lone Ranger, and countless others. Comic effect is heightened by presenting all these characters as past their prime physically, and down on their luck financially, but the end result is more humorous for its madcap concept than for the quality of its execution. Still, it cannot be denied that Farmer handles this kind of mass combat scene as well as any writer in the field, and the pleasure he takes in gathering all these characters together for one final mad brawl comes across well, especially if the reader is also (like Farmer) an aficionado of the action/adventure/detective thrillers of the past. Part Two is a fairly straight kidnapping yarn, although the mad scientist who plans to take over the world via the high-tech distribution of pornography is somewhat over the top, and the publishing house where writers are shackled to their typewriters must have struck a chord with Farmer's writer friends. In Part Three the technical details of the airship come to the fore as several gangs of ne'er-do-wells simultaneously attempt to wrest control of the ship from newly promoted Captain Silver. Since neither of these sections is quite as funny as its predecessors, the book does not so much build to a climax as drift until it collapses. Farmer demonstrates a good command of parody, a rare skill with action, and some facility with mystery/detective stories, but serious science fiction fans will find little to maintain their interest, and the book's weak technical structure undercuts the overall effect. Fans of action/adventure classics will find some delightfully droll moments in this book, but many other readers will not be amused.

every seven years , the placid planet of dante's joy becomes a waking nightmare of death,deformity and madness.to escape,the populace has a choice of sleeping - lying drugged in their tomblike houses,or taking the chance - staying awake & going abroad while their world goes berserk... john carmody , a conscienceless exile from earth ,arrogantly chooses to take the chance... this book is a mad sci-fi , lots of crazy things going on all the time , i got tired of it in the middle ...

This slender volume with its misleading title consists of the story "Jesus on Mars", and a fragment originally excised from the Riverworld series, here entitled "Riverworld War". "Jesus On Mars" is an abridgement of the novel of the same name, originally scheduled to be published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Slow and plodding as this painful work is, one can only wonder how anyone manages to read the longer, novel version. An ominous pall hangs over this story about the exploration of Mars, with none of the rapture one might expect from an encounter with a being who may or may not be Jesus. Even though creating these grim, depressing moods is one of Farmer's specialties, the use of this tone in this context seriously undercuts the curiously equivocal ending, not to mention the sense of wonder that is the essence of good science fiction. On the other hand, the excerpt "Riverworld War" is a thrilling, action-packed depiction of the battle between the two riverboats captained by Sam Clemens and King John, all of which will be familiar (at least in general) to readers of Farmer's excellent Riverworld series. Good as it is, however, readers who are not familiar with these fine novels will find this fragment utterly confusing and ultimately pointless. Even for those who've grown to know and love these characters, the five chapters presented here, comprising about twenty pages, and all utterly bereft of context, are nothing more than an entertaining footnote to The Magic Labyrinth, from which it was originally cut due to space limitations. It's hard to see how even completists who want to read every word Farmer's ever written can find much merit in these superfluities.