CITY OF THE BEAST

NEL paperback, 1974. Cover painting by Boris Vallejo
(thanks: anon).

"There came a peculiar slithering sound from the pit and from it, just to one side of the dais, I saw a great, flat serpent head rise up and begin to sway in rhythm to Horguhl's crooning. It was of a sickly yellowish colour, with long fangs curving out of its mouth from the upper jaw. There was a stale, unwholesome smell about it." 

For Michael Kane, twentieth-century scientist, this is just one of the perils he is forced to face when he finds himself transported to eon-old Mars. All that stands between him and a savage, alien death is his wits and his skill with a sword. 

In this, the first volume of his Martian trilogy, Michael Moorcock - the greatest living writer of heroic fantasy - produces a tale unparalleled since John Carter first paced the trackless emptiness of Barsoom.