More of the same in the second installment of the Eric Carstairs of Zanthodon series.

Predictable and illogical, it's a serviceable adventure yarn derivative of ERB.

Evidence of Carter's increasingly sloppy writing appears; after coining the words 'omad' and 'gomad' for 'king' and 'princess' respectively, Carter introduces a tribesman named Komad just to keep you on your toes. Later on, an unfortunate baddie named Vusk has the misfortune to be killed twice, by an arrow in the chest on p146 and an arrow in the throat on p147.

On top of that, Carstairs encounters a second Cro-Magnon tribe with much the same character archetypes as the tribe he met in book one. One wonders if Carter himself was even reading his own stuff as he cranked it out.

And this time around it's a stegosaurus that's depicted as carnivorous.

The usual cliffhanger ending is here leading into the third volume in this 5 book series. ( )