Planet healer Magnus d'Armand, aka Gar Pike, takes on Norse mythology and the proto-Nazi mentality spawned by its use in Wagner's Ring cycle in Stasheff's sixth installment of his The Rogue Wizard saga. Landing on Siegfried, a planet settled centuries earlier by Terrans, Gar falls afoul of the vicious slave-keeping Midgarders, normal-sized humans who fight continually with huge giants and tiny dwarves. An accident to the original colonizing ship's defrosting unit killed most of the initial settlers, forcing the inbreeding that created the planet's three races. With the help of Alea, a large but lissome escapee from Midgard slavery, Gar telepathically implants the songs and dreams of peace and freedom that will heal this unlikely but appealing world. Stasheff's Crayola-colored backdrops and childish stick-people befit his simplistic but morally decent messages: love your enemies, treat women as equals, govern your society with justice. When Gar and Alea sail off into the galactic sunset (though occupying separate bedrooms), not overwrought Wagnerian thunder but bouncy, reassuring strains of "It's a Small World After All" echo through the imagination.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The sixth adventure of Magnus Gallowglass, aka Gar Pike, takes him to a planet whose civilization is literally Wagnerian. Thanks to a series of accidents and wars, its population is divided into normal-sized Midgarders, Jotunheim giants, and Niebelheim dwarves. The Midgarders constantly persecute the other groups, though without much success. Stasheff works out the two good societies--the giants and the dwarves, that is--with considerable wit and ingenuity, but puts the Midgarders at the mercy of his political agenda, which he advances more than he has in at least some previous books. This time Magnus is less a deus ex machina than he has been in previous adventures, and most of his deeds are presented from the perspective of the Midgarder woman Alea, who is persecuted because of her height. She has telepathic potential, though, on account of which she accompanies Magnus off-planet once necessary reforms have been set to work. Alea may also make stalwart series readers hope that Magnus' loneliness is nearly at an end. Roland Green
