Cristabel

[Andrew A. Apold]

Hokay, now for another attempt at solving this (once again, I was not around
for what may have been said on this subject before).   Searching around with
various search engines with various spellings I found reference to a science
fiction author who wrote a few books in 1970 named Cristabel.  The fact that
they were written in 1970 stuck out, if memory serves this would be about
the time that Sandy Pearlman wrote most of his stuff that eventually found
their way into Imaginos.  The following is taken from a review of her
(Cristabel's) works:

>                Belated Reviews PS#4:  Cristabel
>
>I'm going to take time out from reviewing Great SF to haul out a justly
>obscure sentimental favorite.  Cristabel (one of her books has Christine
>Abrahamsen listed on the copyright, so I assume that's her real name)
>wrote four books which owed a lot more to the romance genre than to sf/f.
>They're not very good, by any reasoned measure -- and I loved reading them.
>As best I can tell, she wrote these four books around 1970, each saw a
>single printing, and then she stopped writing.  They should appeal to
>readers who sometimes enjoy a well written bad romance novel -- the sort
>which is the distillation of long daydreams.

I don't want to quote the whole review (by Dani Zweig), you can find them at

http://sf.www.lysator.liu.se/sf_archive/sf-texts/Belated_Reviews/PS_004.Cris
tabel

Anyways, to sum it up two of the books focus on a mystical tropical island,
a woman who is saved from drowning by the captain of a ship (..."my ship is
charmed"??  Dunno.  Need more info). Anyways, the titles are:

"The Manalacor of Veltakin",
"The Cruachan and Killane",
"The Mortal Immortals",
and "The Golden Olive" (which Zweig mentions is both the worse (by far) of
the batch and the only one easy to find).
Roger Shrubstaff               "I was corrupt before I had power!" - Random
Chancellor
Barony of Silverwater
Kingdom of the Burning Lands

(Andrew A. Apold)