The Black Grail

The Faustus Hexagram #4

by Damien Broderick, Luis Royo (Illustrator)

Avon Books, 1986. Paperback original. Time travel, a swashbuckling hero, lost cities, a dying sun. Broderick here completely rewrites and re-imagines his earlier work "Sorcerer's World" (1970).

Genres: Science Fiction, Dying Earth, Speculative Fiction

310 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Damien Francis Broderick was an Australian science fiction and popular science writer and editor of some 74 books. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction credits him with the first usage of the term "virtual reality" in science-fiction, in his 1982 novel The Judas Mandala.

Reviews

[MF · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book from the Dying Earth sub-genre. It had a lot of ideas packed into the 310 pages. I found it to be a fairly quick read that moved along with an action packed plot and interesting twists on familiar Dying Earth themes. I stopped short of giving this book a 5 star rating because I thought the character development was a little bit lacking and a lot of the third act seemed disjointed from the first parts of the book.

[John Behnken · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was extremely interesting and had some very original ideas, which caused me to rate it slightly higher than I would have rated it if I were thinking in terms of pure enjoyment. It was a bit long for me at 500 some-odd pages (even though I routinely devour 800-1000 page books). I really enjoyed the author's style, but often I had to reread passages because I didn't quite get what he was saying, which was somewhat distracting. This is the kind of book I'd enjoy more as a movie.