Sterling E. Lanier is a Good writer, but did not write all that many books, and the ones he wrote seem to be out of print. I guess that his day job took up much of his time. He produced two of these Hiero books and several other SF titles. I picked up this at the same garage sale where I bought the Andre Norton book (reviewed last week).

In the History of Science Fiction he will be remember as being the person at Chilton Books who agreed to publish Frank Herbert’s Dune. Chilton, as everyone knows who ever worked on a car, published technical automotive books. I have had a Chilton Guide for every car I’ve owned going back to my 1958 Volkswagen convertible bug (I wonder where it is now?). Lanier bought the most popular book ever offered by Chilton’s, but since sales started out slowly, he lost his job over the decision.

The remarkable thing about The Unforsaken Hiero and it’s predecessor, Hiero’s Journey, is the cryptozoology aspects of the books. He has lots of fun describing a post-apocalyptic world where mutations caused by a nuclear event or by human tinkering produce many strange creatures.

The best parts of The Unforsaken Hiero are the full characters, very evil villains, and wonderfully bizarre creatures in a world 5,000 years in the future. The writing is clear and musical and the descriptions are very rich.

The down side of The Unforsaken Hiero is that the plot literally wanders all over the place, giving us plenty of opportunities to discover strange life, but not really moving forward very fast. I was disappointed to discover about 50 pages through that I had read this more than 20 years ago. As I remember, the first book was better, and I looked for a non-existent third book in the series for a while. I have not quite finished it (about 30 pages to go), but my recollection is that Lanier leaves the plot open for the next book. Lanier must have worked on another Hiero book. If I ever meet any of his family, I will surely ask if there is a chance that I could read anything he has written on it.

Lanier’s Hiero books are imaginative and well written. If you see one, snatch it up.