The Wizard of Zao

Robert M. Price, while noting that The Wizard of Zao was "Carter's favorite among his own novels," judges the book "ingenious, but badly written, ... As in the sloppy Gondwane books, Carter lamely explains away various inconsistencies, or he claims to be guessing the answers, as if he, too, is merely a reader of his sources and cannot be any more consistent than they. [But w]hat is really unforgivable is the way Carter just chucks out all his critical canons for literary 'world-making' as set forth in Imaginary Worlds. Sword & Sorcery is supposed to be set in a pre-industrial era, yet here is Oolb Votz talking about 'enzymes' and 'blowing fuses.' ... Our narrator, too, is free in his comparisons of various things to a 'locomotive' or a 'dive bomber.' ... Perhaps he reasoned that the rules were different in a fantasy burlesque, but I cannot think him correct. If it's all right to have Chianti and locomotives, why bother setting the story on a fantasy world in the first place?"^[3]

• Fantastic Fiction entry for The Wizard of Zao

This article about a 1970s fantasy novel is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page.

• v
• t
• e