The Immortal Lin Carter

Mind. Blown.

So, I'm at the coffee shop, and I'm watching the person across from me reading Lin Carter's fantasy sword-and-sorcery novel, The Tower At the Edge of Time (1968) -- a horribly bad novel by a horribly bad writer. Just to give you sampling, here's one sentence that I've always remembered:
"His body was that of a gladiator, or a god, magnificent in its manhood and virile strength, like the gold statue of Lionus the Hero which stands in Argion, the Trader's World, in far Orion. It was burnt a golden bronze, seared by the fierce ...."
(And that's where the GoogleBooks snippet ends. But really, where does one go after "manhood and virile strength?" And how many pulp S&S clichés can you pack into one short paragraph? Well, let me tell you: Lin Carter's not the type to let that sort of challenge go unanswered!)

I read the book sometime in 2007, I think, during my MA at Ohio State. Just a random book I read unrelated to anything else at the time. No idea how the book ended up on my bookshelf, but I read it and ... well, wasn't impressed.

Anyway, this just goes to show how old books arise in the most peculiar places ....

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