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War of the Wizards #3
Web of the Spider
The silk of this unnatural arachnid was like iron. Her struggles were futility. Swiftly the spider ensnared her other hand and began to cocoon her.
The dark and powerful wizard Ekron is locked in a war with his mortal enemy, another equally insidious wizard, Pyre.
But Ekron possesses a talent that was as potent and commanding as it was dangerous to himself: He could see into the future.
The future, once seen, could not be changed. Many times he had looked forward to see his plans fail.
While looking forward into one of his failed plans, Ekron saw the mighty Pyre make one blunder. It served to plant a single tenuous seed for later disaster.
And what of Tiana, the pirate queen, captain of Vixen?
Having found herself arrested for the crimes of piracy and high treason, her sentence was to be cremated alive.
During the trial, while she is pleading her case to High Magistrate Ishcon of the Grand Court of Thesia, he is mysteriously killed and suspended from the ceiling by a spider’s web...
Tiana must escape to an alien land and bring about an end to this war between wizards.
Armed with a mysterious black box she goes to face Ekron and Pyre...
Praise for Andrew J. Offutt:
“Great entertainment of epic scope” – Poul Anderson
“One of the major players from the sword and sorcery boom from the 70s” – Adventures Fantastic
“Offers a new dimension in heroic fantasy.” – Jerry Pournelle
“This is only the first of many adventures to come.” – Andre Norton
Andrew Jefferson Offutt was an American science fiction and fantasy author who wrote prolifically under a variety of pseudonyms and genres, including John Cleve, John Denis, Jeff Morehead, and Turk Winter. He is the father of novelist Chris Offutt and professor Jeff Offutt. A sterling author of both science fiction and fantasy, primarily in the subgenre of Sword and Sorcery, he was most active throughout the 1970s and 80s. Venture Press have also released Demon in the Mirror and The Eyes of Sarsis.
The dark and powerful wizard Ekron is locked in a war with his mortal enemy, another equally insidious wizard, Pyre.
But Ekron possesses a talent that was as potent and commanding as it was dangerous to himself: He could see into the future.
The future, once seen, could not be changed. Many times he had looked forward to see his plans fail.
While looking forward into one of his failed plans, Ekron saw the mighty Pyre make one blunder. It served to plant a single tenuous seed for later disaster.
And what of Tiana, the pirate queen, captain of Vixen?
Having found herself arrested for the crimes of piracy and high treason, her sentence was to be cremated alive.
During the trial, while she is pleading her case to High Magistrate Ishcon of the Grand Court of Thesia, he is mysteriously killed and suspended from the ceiling by a spider’s web...
Tiana must escape to an alien land and bring about an end to this war between wizards.
Armed with a mysterious black box she goes to face Ekron and Pyre...
Praise for Andrew J. Offutt:
“Great entertainment of epic scope” – Poul Anderson
“One of the major players from the sword and sorcery boom from the 70s” – Adventures Fantastic
“Offers a new dimension in heroic fantasy.” – Jerry Pournelle
“This is only the first of many adventures to come.” – Andre Norton
Andrew Jefferson Offutt was an American science fiction and fantasy author who wrote prolifically under a variety of pseudonyms and genres, including John Cleve, John Denis, Jeff Morehead, and Turk Winter. He is the father of novelist Chris Offutt and professor Jeff Offutt. A sterling author of both science fiction and fantasy, primarily in the subgenre of Sword and Sorcery, he was most active throughout the 1970s and 80s. Venture Press have also released Demon in the Mirror and The Eyes of Sarsis.
- GenresFantasySword and Sorcery
363 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 1, 1981
5 people are currently reading
81 people want to read
About the author
Andrew J. Offutt
209 books72 followersAndrew Jefferson Offutt was an American science fiction and fantasy author. He wrote as Andrew J. Offutt, A.J. Offutt, and Andy Offut. His normal byline, andrew j. offutt, had his name in all lower-case letters. His son is the author Chris Offutt.
Offutt began publishing in 1954 with the story And Gone Tomorrow in If. Despite this early sale, he didn't consider his professional life to have begun until he sold the story Blacksword to Galaxy in 1959. His first novel was Evil Is Live Spelled Backwards in 1970.
Offutt published numerous novels and short stories, including many in the Thieves World series edited by Robert Lynn Asprin and Lynn Abbey, which featured his best known character, the thief Hanse, also known as Shadowspawn (and, later, Chance). His Iron Lords series likewise was popular. He also wrote two series of books based on characters by Robert E. Howard, one on Howard's best known character, Conan, and one on a lesser known character, Cormac mac Art.
As an editor Offutt produced a series of five anthologies entitled Swords Against Darkness, which included the first professional sale by Charles de Lint.
Offutt also wrote a large number of pornographic works under twelve different pseudonyms, not all of them identified. Those known include John Cleve, J.X. Williams, and Jeff Douglas. His main works in this area are the science fiction Spaceways series, most of whose volumes were written in collaboration, and the historical Crusader series.
Offutt began publishing in 1954 with the story And Gone Tomorrow in If. Despite this early sale, he didn't consider his professional life to have begun until he sold the story Blacksword to Galaxy in 1959. His first novel was Evil Is Live Spelled Backwards in 1970.
Offutt published numerous novels and short stories, including many in the Thieves World series edited by Robert Lynn Asprin and Lynn Abbey, which featured his best known character, the thief Hanse, also known as Shadowspawn (and, later, Chance). His Iron Lords series likewise was popular. He also wrote two series of books based on characters by Robert E. Howard, one on Howard's best known character, Conan, and one on a lesser known character, Cormac mac Art.
As an editor Offutt produced a series of five anthologies entitled Swords Against Darkness, which included the first professional sale by Charles de Lint.
Offutt also wrote a large number of pornographic works under twelve different pseudonyms, not all of them identified. Those known include John Cleve, J.X. Williams, and Jeff Douglas. His main works in this area are the science fiction Spaceways series, most of whose volumes were written in collaboration, and the historical Crusader series.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 23, 2020
This is the final volume in the trilogy in which offutt and Lyon chronicled the magical and swashbuckling adventures of a brash young pirate woman named Tiana. She's a very good character, if perhaps just a little dated now, like a young Conan or Red Sonja, with a cocky attitude and, of course, the skills with which to back it up. There's a bit of an abrupt shift about halfway through the book where the focus seems to change, probably where the writers realized they had to get back on track and wrap up the trilogy. They accomplished that task well, and Tiana stands as one of the best female characters of her time. There's a glossary appended, which serves as a good reference for the whole series. The cover by Rowena is quite striking and attractive, but unfortunately makes the book appear something like a lingerie catalog, which is an inaccurate perception.
March 7, 2025
Towards the end, reading this trilogy seemed like a chore. All the wit and charm of the first volume had vanished. Thrilling episodes had got replaced by endless machinations and uninteresting people. And the cover... Lesser said, the better.
There were redeeming aspects, primarily our feisty protagonist, who is exceptional by the standards of those times. But the rest...
'Nuff said.
There were redeeming aspects, primarily our feisty protagonist, who is exceptional by the standards of those times. But the rest...
'Nuff said.
July 9, 2019
Some great death traps for a thief to escape and a wizard's master plan that is so multilayered and complex that it goes off perfectly. It even has a dragon...
February 9, 2014
It changes gears about halfway through. It begins with the same tone and material as the previous two books. Tiana Highrider switches between egotistical, vain, and insecure, all according to a certain stereotype. Its success as comic relief is a matter of the reader's tastes. I found it grating. The plot would advance for a time and I'd forget my irritation, and out of the blue she'd think something disappointingly cliche--that her breasts are inconveniently large or that she's much prettier than the other women in the room, or something--and then I'd be back to being annoyed. And like the previous books, the dangers she faces are laced with sexual menace or sexual violence, usually involving nakedness or exposure or physical restraint (most often all three) and then some thug mentions wanting to rape her.
It later turns serious in a way that the series hadn't until now, revealing a side to Offutt's writing that I never knew existed. Tiana gets to keep her clothes (for the most part) and calms down, while the story starts to hinge on mechanical aspects of the world's magic: the limitations of prescience, the way that expectations and perceptions feed into illusions, and the paradox of non-beings and anti-light and anti-sound, and the cosmology of the ultimate Good or ultimate Right. I finished wondering where these things were earlier in the series.
It later turns serious in a way that the series hadn't until now, revealing a side to Offutt's writing that I never knew existed. Tiana gets to keep her clothes (for the most part) and calms down, while the story starts to hinge on mechanical aspects of the world's magic: the limitations of prescience, the way that expectations and perceptions feed into illusions, and the paradox of non-beings and anti-light and anti-sound, and the cosmology of the ultimate Good or ultimate Right. I finished wondering where these things were earlier in the series.
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July 24, 2024Good God is this dated. Tiana is not on-page with any man for more than a few paragraphs without him implying he wants to fuck her, trying to assault her, or actually assaulting her. Her foster father is a black man constantly referred to as a reformed cannibal, there are other brown skinned people referred to as savages. All the bad guys happen to be fat and/or ugly to perpetuate our "beauty is good good is beautiful" bullshit, the works. However the idea that Good and Evil are both fundamentally destructive forces to humanity and they must be kept at an eternal stalemate for the survival of the human race is pretty interesting, and I really like the conceptualization of wizards here. The book also excels in creating fun fight/adventure setups... I had a lot of fun with the hungry apples fight scene in particular. Prose can easily be described as "excitable" w frequent exclamation points and dramatic ellipses... which can be fun or feel melodramatic, mileage may vary. Mainly the thing that distracted me was the number of characters who say things "blandly". There are so many beautiful synonyms and epithets in this text that I was surprised the adverb cropped up as often as it did. Anyways I really wish that I could enjoy this more but the bigotry really fucking kills the vibe.
December 27, 2022
The final installment of a series that started with "Demon in the Mirror" and continued with "Eyes of Sarsis", it's.... OK. There is an ending, which is quite abrupt and the Big Reveal is also quite sudden.
Having bought this at Amazon as an E-book a few years ago, it wasn't the easist of reads. Unlike the first book, which was more in an episodal format. The perspective shifts continuously between Tiana and the unknown "Gray knight" (whose real identity is the Big Reveal). There's also quite a lot of names due to the traveling-around of Tiana.
In the end: a mixed bag of things. I'm glad I finished it; not sure if I will read it again.
Having bought this at Amazon as an E-book a few years ago, it wasn't the easist of reads. Unlike the first book, which was more in an episodal format. The perspective shifts continuously between Tiana and the unknown "Gray knight" (whose real identity is the Big Reveal). There's also quite a lot of names due to the traveling-around of Tiana.
In the end: a mixed bag of things. I'm glad I finished it; not sure if I will read it again.
July 18, 2021
While not great literature, this final book and the two earlier ones in the series are a lot of fun.
May 19, 2013
Re-read the whole series over the last week in honor of Mr. Offut's recent passing on into Drood's arms and am relieved to find that I still enjoy the series despite its slightly dated themes. Tiana can be an aggravation, of course, but I've always felt that that was intentional on Offut's part. I doubt his tongue was very far from his cheek when he worked on this series.
All in all, I'd recommend the series with the caveat that he was writing in a time period when the sort of over-the-top heroic fantasy was popular and often problematic, and that the work (to my mind) is a sneaky way of poking fun at those problematic aspects.
All in all, I'd recommend the series with the caveat that he was writing in a time period when the sort of over-the-top heroic fantasy was popular and often problematic, and that the work (to my mind) is a sneaky way of poking fun at those problematic aspects.
July 11, 2012
I really liked this. I enjoyed the first two books in the series, but I felt that this one was the best of the bunch and brings things together in a fairly satisfying read. Good none too serious hack and slash.
February 18, 2012
This is a hard book to rate, but despite some great scenes, and a satisfying ending, it suffers from the problem of having a really annoying main character.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews