Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

Well, I think it is official. I only like Chalker's [b:The Four Lords of the Diamond|7184707|The Four Lords of the Diamond (The Four Lords of the Diamond, #1-4)|Jack L. Chalker|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1258936790s/7184707.jpg|7704807], everything else of his that I've read has been blase to bleh.

So what makes this different? It has many of the same themes as his other books. I think part of it is that I read this back in highschool and it made an impression on me, and it has stuck.

Also, who wouldn't want to have an idealized body made by your mate while you get to make her body to suit you?

[Update 1.24.16 - reread for fun, and bumping up a star...eventually, this entire series may get five because I keep coming back to it. Anyway, I must have been in a mood when I wrote the snippet below. While it is the least of the series, it has its merits. I still like it.]

The least of the tetralogy, Chalker's must have been in a preachy mood when he wrote the beginning. It almost seems as if he thought, "Well, I'm committed to four..." Still, it continues a creative series in an entertaining narrative.

The third book in the four-volume series. The start is a bit tiresome due to the repetitions – once again we should follow the split of thoughts of another mind starting almost word-by-word from the previous books. Then we move to Charon, Looks like hell as their explorer said. On this world the warden organism gives people a kind of psionics masquerading as magic.
Interesting and original even if a bit old-fashioned SF novel.

Park Lacoch, whose mind is implanted into a new body and exiled to Charon, a hellish, hot penal world controlled by a mysterious, powerful dragon entity, investigates alien influences while surviving a dangerous, witch-ruled society.

Charon is a Warden Diamond world, a penal colony surrounded by a symbiotic organism that prevents escape. The Confederacy needs to identify an alien entity controlling the prison world. They send in an agent using a bodysnatch technique, placing a controlled mind into an exile's body.

Book three of the Four Lords of the Diamond. In this world there is little technology, and mainly sorcs and apts that have the power. Some disconnects when they did some physical things that could have been done easier by manipulating the wa. But of course it was good for the action sequence at the time, so we can let it slide. All is building up to Medusa...

Great book