"The Magic Labyrinth" by Philip José Farmer (1918-2009)

 

 

Publisher: Berkley Medallion
Copyright: 1980
ISBN: None listed

The Magic Labyrinth is the fourth book in the Riverworld series, and like the previous instalments: "To Your Scattered Bodies Go", "The Fabulous Riverboat", and "The Dark Design" the story revolves around getting the source of the river. The original characters of Richard Francis Burton, Samuel Clements, Hermann Goering, and many others make return appearances, and most of them end up dying in one way or another.

I personally found this book to not be as well written as the others, but rather than harp on the fact that I had some trouble believing the various developments the Riverworld residents made. I will this say that while the concepts good, the multi-chapter detailed review of how a war is fought between two river boats just way too long to be worth reading. The characters that we'd met before (at least those who were still alive) were written well, but some of the new ones weren't as well developed, and in some cases they played what I felt were significant parts.

This fourth book overall was in my opinion the poorest of the four. This was mainly due to the points mentioned above, but also because of the rather long passages of exposition to I assume explain who certain characters were for those who couldn't be bothered to read the first books or utterly failed history class in school. I still believe the amount of potential the initial premise had it could have been much better exploited in a myriad of ways rather than as a goal to see who could reach the polar sea first, no matter who suffered.

This book concludes the series or so we are led to believe by the book jacket, however it turns out there is another in the series entitled "The Gods of Riverworld" but at this time I don't think I'll be reading it any time soon.