Didn't I recently state that I wouldn't be bothering with any of Lin Carter's fantasy novels? That I did, but unbeknownst to me at the time, I'd already purchased one of these fantasy novels within a larger assortment of science fiction paperbacks by various authors.
Black Legion of Callisto is probably best described as "John Carter on One of Jupiter's Moons." It's more professionally written than Time War, another book by the same author reviewed here recently, but it borrows a lot from both Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard. In the midst of the Vietnam War an agent of the U.S. government finds himself stranded on an alien world, and after a series of adventures detailed in a previous novel he enlists in the titular Black Legion.
Some of the story points in this novel don't make a great deal of sense, but it does seem like the kind of book I would have loved in my early teens. I was obsessed with both Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft at that age, and Black Legion of Callisto ticks off many of those boxes. Is it good? No, not really. Is it corny? Yes it is. Is it entertaining? Eh, it's OK. You're not likely to remember much of the plot after finishing it, but I didn't find it especially hard to get through.
One part of this book that hasn't aged well, however, is the introduction, in which the author describes the terrestrial career of his hero. This introduction, saluting "our brave boys in Vietnam" and wishing them the best of luck in their endeavors, doesn't sit well today, and considering that the "final boss" of this book is something of a Fu Manchu/Asian stereotype, it's pro-American interventionist stance is even harder to swallow.
Black Legion of Callisto is the second of eight in Carter's Callisto series. I'd like to say that I won't read the others, but who knows? I might just find myself with another pile of science fiction/fantasy paperbacks at some point, and another entry in this series might be found within it. At any rate I definitely won't seek them out.
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