THE DARKANGEL

A whippet-paced Quest fairy-tale—free of allegorical hardware but swarming with mythical creatures, Oz-ian settings, and noble sentiments. In the days when the skyborne Ancient Ones have retreated to their domed desert cities, servant-girl Aeriel sees her mistress carried off by a feathered fury: the darkangel vampyre. And soon, determined on revenge, Aeriel is herself spirited off to the darkangel's tower—ordered to spin for his 13 wraithy wives. (Their souls are kept in little vials on the vampyre's necklace—to be drunk eventually by his mother the water witch.) Aeriel feeds the darkangel's chained-up gargoyles; she has compassion for the wives; she's fed and helped by the duarough, a little man of the caves. And soon, armed with a magic rhyme, Aeriel escapes (via a heron-turned-boat), is saved by the lyon (or leosol), meets the immortal star horse (or equustel). But when she returns, now equipped to kill the darkangel, Aerial discovers that she is to be Bride 14. Can she kill him? After all, she ""loves his power and his beauty, the magnificence and majesty of him. . . ."" A little Bela Lugosi, a lot of Disney and Grimm: juvenile fun.