Some Summer Lands

Some Summer Lands is my favorite work in the Atlan Saga. Take Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan, H. Rider Haggard's Lost Civilizations and John Norman's Gor in a land "before the continents were formed" and dinosaurs and human coexist and you have Atlan. The heroine of the first three books (or four, since sometimes The Serpent is split into two) is Cija. Raised as a princess in a tower to believe she's a goddess and males are extinct, through the books she has more perils than Pauline, going from Empress to brothel slave. Cija does grow on you, important that the first books up to now purported to be her diaries so you were getting everything from her perspective. Some Summer Lands is told by Seka, her daughter by the snake-man general show more Zerd--and far smarter and snarkier than her mother even at her tender age. Sometimes I'm embarrassed to admit I've read these, let alone these are favorites that have been on my bookshelves since my teens, but there you are. Addictive like crack. Or just crack pot. This end to the sage makes me feel less embarrassed ;-) show less

Told through the eyes of Cija's daughter Seka, merciless observer of her mother's adventures. The horrible interlude at Soursere is pure Cold Comfort Farm.

Loved it! A strange and fantastic adventure story.

Book 4 0r 5 of the Atlan trilogy, following some 11 years after the previous volume "The City"

Some Summer Lands by Jane Gaskell (1977)