"It was a brutal age," says Anderson defensively in his afterword about the 9th-century setting [of his novel The Demon of Scattery]. Then why write about it except as protest … or nightmare warning …? Demon does it for fun. There is much casual brutality and stiffly antiquarian detail, and one good sea-serpent which should have devoured the entire project, especially whoever thought up charging readers five times what the wordage would cost elsewhere. Caveat emptor.

Joanna Russ, "Crossing Inner Lands," in Book World—The Washington Post (© 1980, The Washington Post), February 24, 1980, p. 7.∗