The Serpent is a novel by British writer Jane Gaskell. It was first published in 1963. [1] It is the first part of the Atlan series, a set of four (or five) fantasy novels set in prehistory. The following novels are Atlan , The City , and Some Summer Lands . The stories are set in Atlantis and South America.
The Serpent was also published split into two books, titled The Serpent and The Dragon, hence the confusion over the numbering of the volumes.
The protagonist of the novel is Cija (pronounced 'kee-yah'), the illegitimate child of the Dictatress of a small kingdom and a high-ranking priest. The story itself is written from her point of view. She was kept in a tower and looked after by servants until she turned 17; until that time she had not met any men and believed that men were extinct and women ruled the world. She was also raised to believe she was a goddess, related to the gods of her country, to whom she refers to as her "cousins".
When she is 17 years old, her mother releases her from the tower and gives her as a hostage to Zerd, the half-Human, half-Reptilian warlord, leader of an invading army on their way to conquer the mysterious continent of Atlan. Cija is secretly instructed by her mother to seduce and kill Zerd. Eventually, she succeeds neither in killing Zerd, nor in warning the Atlantean empire about the invaders, but she ends up being married to Zerd and becoming Empress of Atlan.
Colin Greenland reviewed The Serpent for Imagine magazine, and stated that "rich with sensation and vitality that make much more recent fantasy writing look quite pale." [2]
The Colour of Magic is a 1983 fantasy comedy novel by Terry Pratchett, and is the first book of the Discworld series. The first printing of the British edition consisted of only 506 copies. Pratchett has described it as "an attempt to do for the classical fantasy universe what Blazing Saddles did for Westerns."
Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, known by her pen names Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm, is an American writer of speculative fiction. As Hobb, she is best known for her fantasy novels set in the Realm of the Elderlings, which comprise the Farseer, Liveship Traders and Tawny Man trilogies, the Rain WildChronicles, and the Fitz and the Fool trilogy. Lindholm's writing includes the urban fantasy novel Wizard of the Pigeons and science fiction short stories, among other works. As of 2018, her fiction has been translated into 22 languages and sold more than 4 million copies.
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Jane Gaskell is a British fantasy writer.
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Atlan is a fantasy novel by British writer Jane Gaskell. It was first published in 1965. It is the second book in the Atlan series set in prehistoric South America and Atlantis. The first book in the series was The Serpent, and Atlan is followed by two more books, The City and Some Summer Lands.
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The Best of John W. Campbell is the title of two collections of science fiction short stories by American author John W. Campbell. The first, a British edition edited by George Hay, was first published in hardcover by Sidgwick & Jackson in February 1973, and in paperback by Sphere Books in November 1976. Sidgwick & Jackson later gathered together with The Far-Out Worlds of A. E. van Vogt (1968) into the omnibus volume Science Fiction Special 15 (1975), and with Brian N. Ball's Singularity Station (1973) and Poul Anderson's Orbit Unlimited (1961) into the omnibus volume Science Fiction Special 20 (1977). The second collection of this title, an American edition edited by Lester del Rey, was first published in hardcover by Nelson Doubleday in May 1976, and in paperback by Ballantine Books in June 1976 as a volume in its Classic Library of Science Fiction. The American edition was reprinted by Del Rey/Ballantine in February 1995, and has also been translated into German.
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