Amazon.com (ISBN 0446609307, Mass Market Paperback)

"The truth is a riddle wrapped in an enigma--or sometimes in a nice piece of hot flat bread fresh from the oven. That's my friend Etjole." So surmises the boisterous sword-swinger Simna Ibn Sind, one of three fantastical companions that the seemingly simple Ejtole Ehomba has gathered in his wanderings through the three-book Journeys of the Catechist series (preceded by Into the Thinking Kingdoms and Carnivores of Light and Darkness--Triumph of Souls concludes the series). But as every fan knows (at times, unfortunately, to the point of eye-rolling), the self-effacing Ehomba only seems simple: Alan Dean Foster's answer to Baron Von Munchhausen is a modest, humble sheperd who talks with dolphins, fights tornadoes, summons man-eating sharks out of the air, and plays music that will make the snow dance. And that, predictably, is not the half of it.

Fulfilling the dying-gasp request of Tarin Beckwith from book 1, Etjole is finally getting around to rescuing the Visioness Thermaryl of Laconda from the evil clutches of Hymneth the Possessed, a very disagreeable sorcerer-type. Along with Simna and his two other companions, the big talking cat, Ahlitak, and the hulking man-beast, Hunkapan Aub, Etjole dutifully heads west to rescue the damsel, but must first control the four winds, get his ship towed by a jet-propelled Kraken (for, literally, the price of a big cup of coffee), stare down skeletons, dupe demons, and all other sorts of such likable nonsense. --Paul Hughes