Yesterday I mentioned one of my recent book purchases, Chris Roberson’s novel Paragaea. I’ve started reading it already, despite all the years-old purchases that are waiting in line for my attention, and I’ve got to tell you, it’s a real corker.

Subtitled “A Planetary Romance,” the book is a fantasy adventure in the vein of the pulpy Edgar Rice Burroughs novels I loved as a kid, the yarns about Barsoom and Pellucidar, in which intrepid travelers discover lost worlds inhabited by barbarians and monsters, where some still use ancient technology so advanced that it’s almost magical while everyone else fights with sword and muscle.

Whatever else this book may turn out to be, it’s a fast-paced thrill ride. I’m only on page 50 and already our protagonist, Leena, a Soviet cosmonaut from the year 1964, has launched into orbit, passed through some kind of undetected doorway to another place, tumbled out of control into the skies of an alien world, ejected from her crashing spacecraft, splashed down in a river, nearly drowned in her own spacesuit, been captured by humanoid jaguars, been rescued by the deposed prince of the jaguar-men and a human adventurer from the Napoleonic Era, faced down a rampaging giant sloth, and been told by a scholar of this new world — Paragaea — that her own Earth is only a myth, a fairy tale told to children, and that if she believes she originated there, she must be mad. I love this stuff; it reminds me of when I was twelve or so, biding my time in between Star Wars movies by questing around Mars with John Carter and his green, four-armed buddy, Tars Tarkas.
It’s way too soon to recommend the book, as I still have a couple hundred pages to go, but if it sustains this level of breathless wonder and breezy fun, I’ll be shouting its praises from the rooftops when I’m finished…