Book description
Tortured Intellectual Kirk Salazar, devout intellectual, had quite been
looking forward to his field research on Sunga. He aimed to discover how
the stump-tailed, semiarboreal kusis lived without being injured within
the venom tree forest. A fascinating topic! His thesis would have
progressed splendidly, save for one thing. A certain lack of financing
necessitated that he travel through Sunga with a tour group. Much
against his will, he soon became embroiled with a conglomeration of
characters even more peculiar than Sunga's natural wonders. First there
were the hard-core tourists, always pushing and complaining, desperate
to glimpse the rare, birdlike zutas. Worse the Cantemir - a man lewd,
rude and dangerous - who had struck a deal with the native Chief to
destroy the whole Sunga forest for lumber! But most formidable was
Alexis Ritter. She was the high priestess of a Sunga cult dedicated to
chastity. But she sure seemed to have a use in mind for Salazar's body!
Doggedly Salazar pursued his research through ambushes, sex, and even
attempted murder. A determined intellectual does not give up easily -
even if he has to go to extremes to defend his thesis! Lyon Sprague de
Camp was born in 1907 and died in 2000. During a writing career that
spanned seven decades, he wrote over a hundred books in the areas of
science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, non-fiction and biography.
Although arguably best known for his continuation of Robert E. Howard's
Conan stories, de Camp was an important figure in the formative period
of modern SF, alongside the likes of Isaac Asimov and Robert A.
Heinlein, and was a winner of the Hugo, World Fantasy Life Achievement
and SFWA Grand Master awards.
