Talk:Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

Notable?
Pinging User:Cunard... so far this has nothing. ISFDb suggests one fanzine and two magazines, so it looks rescuable. Anything else you can see? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:29, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Hi. Here are some sources about Charon: A Dragon at the Gate:  The article notes: "Charon is hell in a rainstorm. Park Lacoch has his work cut out for him from the beginning. Prison planets are bad enough but on this one a micro-organism made magic scientifically possible. Without help Park has every chance of ending his days as a man-sized, carnivorous, two-legged lizard. ... This is the gimmick to this particular novel. Chalker has begun each volume with the same character and has taken him through a series of adventures which warp him in subtly different directions from his original mission. The results have been been unique unique while remaining consistent to the original character of the agent."  The article notes: "Charon. A Dragon at the Gate. Jack L. Chalker. Ballantine Books, New York, 1983, 289 pp. They took the body of Park Lacoach and stripped away his mind, transferring the mind of a top Confederacy operator to his brain. Then they stuck him aboard a spaceship and exiled him to Charon, one of the Worlds of Warden Diamond, from which no man could ever return. A mysterious organism on those worlds infected everything, making life away from them impossible afterwards. Charon was a hell-world in literal fact it was too near its sun, making life all but unbearable in its hot steamy atmosphere. Strange beasts roamed the jungles—and stranger still, the group known as the witchcraft plotted with the Lord in exile to take over the planet."  The review notes: "Through a turn of events Park becomes a changeling and meets up with the person most likely to help him in his task, Tulio Koril the ex-Lord of Charon. Sadly I didn't enjoy this book as much as its predecessor, where there was a more involved plotline with the character taking an active part in the proceedings. Here our hero seems to wander aimlessly around and almost literally fall into situations, although thankfully Chalker is able to make the characters fairly interesting. So what Charon: A Dragon At The Gate lacks in action it almost makes up for in character interest value, almost."  The review notes: "I have never been too taken by Chalker's specialty—that of human transmutation, but I am interested in the complexity of his where nothing is ever plot—quite what it appears to be. In effect, he is writing a science fiction spy novel where the question of who is working with whom and why is paramount. There are twists and turns and red herrings all over the place. How he is going to be able to tie up all the loose ends in the final volume (due in April 1983) will be a wonder to behold. I believe this is a much stronger novel than the first volume and it is fast-moving and entertaining. Certainly worth looking into if extended series are your bag. Each book can stand on its own merits, however."  The book notes: "In Charon: A Dragon at the Gate, the Warden organism has a different impact: it permits the people of Charon to become great magicians. The agent sent to replace the overlord must therefore learn to deal with this magic, leading to a tremendous struggle-and the discovery that the ability to communicate with the Warden organism is the ultimate weapon of magic."  The review notes: "Charon: A Dragon At The Gate. Del Rey / S Ballantine, 1982. $2.95pb. 289p. 0-345-29370-3. In order to infiltrate the four penal colonies of the Warden Diamond and stop a combined Diamond / Alien take over of the Confederacy, assassin Krega's personality has been imposed on four other humans whose own personalities have been destroyed through the Merton Process. A strange disease enables humans to transmute matter, but this same disease kills its human host if he tries to leave the Warden Diamond. In book three of the series The Four Lords Of The Diamond, Krega in the body of Park Lacoch, convicted mass murderer, is sent to the hellishly hot world of Charon to assassinate Charon's lord. Already confused politics are intensified by witchcraft, and Lacoch is no longer sure where his loyalties lie since he must make Charon his permanent home and he has been turned into a half beast , half man changeling. Suspense and adventure are uniformly maintained, and although the third in a series, this novel is readable on its own, but will probably have readers clamoring for the rest of the series."  The article notes: "At the end of my review of what I felt was a rather disappointing second book in the series, I hoped it would pick up again again in the third, and fortunately it has. Chalker's "Agent With No Name" hero, who has his mind impressed on the brains of four convicts to accomplish his mission in the system of criminal worlds known as the Warden Diamond, had a fairly straight-forward run in the first book. He had some identity problems in the second book, starting out as a woman, but here in his third persona he becomes a diminutive ex-serial killer with a confused sexual identity." </ol>Cunard (talk) 09:38, 24 February 2024 (UTC)