CHIMAERA'S COPPER

Third in a series that began with Dragon's Gold and Serpent's Silver, featuring a prophecy, a young hero, and several parallel magical worlds—in short, the familiar Anthony formula. Kelvin Knight Hackleberry (our hero), along with his half-brother and their father, takes a transporter trip that ends up on the wrong parallel world, where they are instantly captured by the froglike locals and turned over to the man-eating Chimaera. Meanwhile, good King Rufert has been banished by the wicked sorceress Zoanna and replaced by King Rowforth, who looks exactly like him except for the shape of his ears (the only way to tell natives of different "planes" apart). Can Kelvin escape the Chimaera in time to stop evil Rowforth from conquering the world? Given the lifeless writing, and a pack of banal characters who invariably do something stupid at a crucial point in the story, not many readers are likely to care. A very flat performance; the ending promises at least one more installment.