"Non fare il modesto con me, signor 'un solo secondo nome non mi basta'. Cosa diavolo significa R.R., comunque?""Ricco e Ridicolmente famoso.""Brutto arrogante figlio di...""Scherzo, Poul. Allora, cosa vuoi?"Se sei alla ricerca di una recensione letteraria che renda giustizia a un pilastro del fantasy classico, devi assolutamente leggere Tre cuori e tre leoni di Poul Anderson. Questo romanzo non è solo un'avventura mozzafiato, ma un tassello fondamentale per chiunque voglia esplorare le radici d...

I don’t write reviews.

And I really can’t make my brain create a note for this book (I’ve been empty-headed on this one for days) so I will list thoughts.

Lizzie likes: Holger, swanmay, Hugi, introduction of Law vs. Chaos, werewolf hunt, troll riddles, magic

Lizzie let-downs: the ending, stretching short story into novel, what was really happening?, the ending, kill-off, the ending

In what reads like an homage to Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Poul Anderson time loops WWII anti-Nazi espionage with an alternate universe that is straight outta ultra-imaginative D&D.A full year before The Fellowship of the Ring was even published Poul was delivering page after page of elves and trolls and fire-breathing you-know-whats. His reluctant protagonist is, quite literally, a time traveling knight in shining armor who embodies every cliché in the genre. ...

“Wave mechanics already admits the possibility of one entire cosmos coexisting with ours. It was not hard to write the equations for an infinity of such parallel worlds. By logical necessity the laws of nature would vary from one to another. Therefore, somewhere in the boundlessness of reality, anything you can imagine must actually exist!”As in the The Broken Sword Poul Anderson likes to back up his fantasy with some science. I am not sure why but it does add to the enjoyment of the book if you...

Holger Carlsen is transported to another Earth, where he is destined to play a part in the war between Law and Chaos. Assisting him are Hugi, a dwarf, and Alianora, a swan maiden. Can they overcome the forces of Chaos and get Holger home?I got this from Netgalley.Since I've been wanting to read this for several ice ages, since I first got into Dungeons and Dragons and, later, Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion craziness, it had a lot to live up to. Yeah, it was kind of a disappointment.Three He...

I was charmed from the get-go for I knew that this was a classic, more SF/F Andersonian mix, a retelling of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and that is exactly what I got.There's plenty of old adventure that's a little less nuts than White's Arthurian adventures, with a bit more in the straight adventure arena, including a sphinx/troll Scene, clever science fixes for epic battles, swooning women, time travel, witches, Faery courts, dragons, hidden memories and unbreakable promises. ...

I suppose many of my friends here will wonder at the rating I've given this book. Looking at my screen name you can probably tell I like the paladin character. Reading this book I find myself wondering if possibly Gary Gygax may have been influenced in the creation of the Dungeons and Dragons Paladin by this book. Holger Carlsen is definitely a Paladin.There is a dearth of good books about Paladins (I actually have several in various stages of completion...pray for me. I need to complete them). ...

After reading Anderson’s novel The High Crusade, I remarked how I wondered if Anderson was influenced by Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Twain must have influenced Three Hearts and Three Lions as the basis of the two stories are so close (there is even a direct reference to Twain’s work). Poul Anderson was born in America but was of Scandinavian ancestry and his mother moved the family to Denmark to live for a time prior to World War II when they all moved back to the s...

*Yawns*This was an extremely basic fantasy novel. It felt like the author was reading the following handbook: The Idiots Guide to Writing a Fantasy Novel 1. Choose your Hero. Preferably a male. Someone with strong, chiseled features.2. Put your Hero in an awkward, fantastical, situation. (In Poul's case, he transported his lead character to another world riddled with a war between magical beings and non magical beings.)3. Send your Hero on a quest. And another one. And another one. In fact, send...

Aug2011: I've read this maybe half a dozen times in the past 40 years & still love it. In the tradition of an Arthurian legend, a modern man is dumped into a fantasy world with abilities & limits that he doesn't understand well. He winds up on a quest with some very interesting characters, faces challenges both internal & external, & winds it all up in a rather abrupt fashion. I can never quite decide if I like the ending or not as the realism of it is somewhat at odds with the t...