The answers behind the enigmatic origins of Riverworld lie at last within reach, as the remarkable gathering of Earthlings--including Sir Richard Francis Burton, Samuel Clemens, Alice Liddell Hargreaves (the real-life Alice in Wonderland), Cyrano de Bergerac, Ulysses S. Grant, and Baron Von Richtoven--finally breaches the stronghold of Riverworld's extraordinary super-race.
But answers would lead to more enigmatic questions . . .
Who is the Mysterious Stranger who taunted the Riverworld resurrectees with hints of the truth? What is the key to the gargantuan computer that wields the power of life and death? The astonishing secrets lie within the Dark Tower--but only for those brave enough to seek them and wise enough to decipher them . . .
The Magic Labyrinth (1980) 400 pages by Philip Jose Farmer.
The fourth book in the Riverworld series. Every human that ever lived past the age of five years old, from millenia B.C. to present day, has been resurrected on an engineered planet, Riverworld. So called because the planet is one long river that winds and spirals its way around the globe.
By now we know that the ethicals built, or engineered, the planet. We don't know why, but there is one ethical, X, that isn't in agreement with the plan, and he has contacted Richard Francis Burton, Samuel Clemens, and others to help him. The planet is mineral poor, but X has worked it so that an asteroid made it through the planet's defense shields. This allowed Sam to build a riverboat, but he had to make an alliance with King John, and John betrayed him and stole the boat. He built another...
The story picks up with Sam and the new boat going up river. Two goals, one to make it to the end of the river and somehow get to the ethicals control center, but the one that is foremost in his mind is to catch John and get revenge for his stealing the first boat. The first half of the book, as the Not for Hire is gaining on the Rex Grandissimus, goes into the past of several of the characters, Earthly and Riverworld, to show us how they've gotten to this point.
There are then 80 pages of the battle between Sam and King John. Then the group goes on, struggles through the defenses guarding the ethicals headquarters with some guesses as to what the planet is about. In the last pages of the book we find out who the ethicals are, and why they created Riverworld.
The riverworld plotline, through the four books, was great. The Mark Twain/King John stories were a sidetrack. At points entertaining, but bogged down a bit, too. Reading the Joe Smith dialog was a bit cumbersome as well. I get it, Choe Thmith talkth vith a lithp, but come on... the characters are supposedly talking esperanto anyway, and their dialog is in plain English, translate for him, too.
