This story is really too open-ended for my taste, but it is well written and the characters, as always in Simak, are superbly human.

The novel is a quest fantasy, set in a parallel world where magic has developed rather than technology. Unusually for this genre, the protagonist is from the fantasy world and the character from our own world is relatively minor. The third world in the series is less well handled, unfortunately, and the Christianity (which rules the fantasy world through the Inquisition, of course) doesn't seem to affect characters' lives as one might expect.

And once again, Simak stretches the boundaries of the genre by including extra-terrestial characters in the fantasy world...

I now have TimDevereux's copy, which is in better condition than this one, so I have stuck a release sticker over my old permanent collection sticker in order to release this copy.

The lock is in ruins, but on the footpath along the Itchen navigation there's a board telling people about the history of the lock. I left the book by this board.