"H. Warner Munn - Merlin's Ring" - читать интересную книгу автора (Munn H Warner)

Merlin's Ring
H. Warner Munn
A Del Rey Book

Published by Ballantine Books

Copyright © 1974 by H. Warner Munn Introduction Copyright © 1974 by Lin Carter

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by
Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Ballantine Books of
Canada, Ltd., Toronto, Canada.

ISBN 0-345-28382-1

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition: June 1974 Sixth Printing: January 1979

Cover art by Gervasio Gallardo

To your Corenice; your Gwalchmai;

By whatever other names you may know them;

In whatever Land of Dream.

About Merlin’s Ring and H. Warner Munn:

Through the Ages

The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series has been in business for several years now, and among the many
different varieties of the fantasy that have appeared under the Sign of the Unicorn’s Head one surprising
omission stands out. I refer, of course, to the Arthurian fantasy. This is due to mere chance, not to any
antipathy for the subject. Most of the fine books centered on the Arthurian legend are in print—The
Once and Future King, The Crystal Cave, The Sword in the Stone —to mention only a few.

Quite recently, however, an odd coincidence has occurred. Two different writers have written two very
different books and submitted them to Ballantine Books; both happen to be Arthurian fantasies, and both
happen to be superbly imaginative and thoroughly entertaining works of fantastic fiction. So at last we are
able to complete the fantasy spectrum by including Arthuriana among all the other varieties of fantasy thus
far published under this colophon.

The first of these books you will already have seen, if you are the sort of reader who haunts the
paperback stands and regularly picks up the new releases in the Series. I refer, of course, to that
spectacular romance, Excalibur, (August 1973) a new novel by a new writer named Sanders Anne
Laubenthal. The second of these two books is the novel you are about to read, Merlin’s Ring, by H.
Warner Munn.

While Miss Laubenthal is new to the ranks of fantasy writers, Mr. Munn is an old hand at the craft. He
was one of the original Weird Tales writers, and his first story, “The Werewolf of Ponkert,” appeared in