The Enchantress of World's End
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 Cover of the first edition. | |
| Author | Lin Carter |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Michael Whelan |
| Cover artist | Michael Whelan |
| Language | English |
| Series | Gondwane Epic |
| Genre | Fantasy |
| Publisher | DAW Books |
Publication date | 1975 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 192 |
| OCLC | 1545692 |
| Preceded by | The Warrior of World's End |
| Followed by | The Immortal of World's End |
The Enchantress of World's End is a fantasy by American writer Lin Carter, set on a decadent far-future Earth in which all the world's land masses have supposedly drifted back together to form a last supercontinent called Gondwane. The book is chronologically the second in Carter's Gondwane Epic (the culminating novel Giant of World's End having been issued earlier). It was first published in paperback by DAW Books in May 1975, and reprinted in May 1977. A trade paperback edition was published by Wildside Press in January 2001 and an ebook edition by Thunderchild Publishing in January 2019. The book includes a map by the author of the portion of Gondwane in which its story is set and "A Glossary of Unfamiliar Names and Terms" by the author.[1]
Ganelon becomes the prisoner and object of the passion of the enchantress Zelmarine, Queen of Red Magic. When not fruitlessly wooing him, she sends him to her mind-prober Varesco, a Mentalist of Ning, himself subject to a secret lust for his Queen. During the probing, Ganelon's mental superpowers start to emerge.
Sources
Robert M. Price, Carter's literary executor, wrote that "[t]he "World's End" books are compounded of about equal parts of A. E. van Vogt's The Book of Ptath, Jack Vance's The Dying Earth, Clark Ashton Smith's "Zothique" tales, and Carter's own Tower of the Medusa ... with a little Oz thrown in for extra silliness.[2]
Reviewer Andrew Darlington also detected such influences, specifically Smith’s "Zothique" and Vance's "Dying Earth," with hints of John Brunner’s Catch a Falling Star and Michael Moorcock’s The Dancers at the End of Time).[3]