Who's that frog-licker?

June 11, 2008 1:16 PM

WhatWasThatBookFilter: a friend of mine needs help tracking down a fantasy/sci-fi paperback she read back in 1997. Full description below.

Quoth my friend:

"What I Remember
-- the cover was of an orange-y sky with a grey-purple rock face with a large stone with a hole through it that might have been called 'The Eye of ----'?
-- their was a rich, Baron Harkonnen-type guy who licked frogs either for drug or vision-inducing properties.
-- the lead might have been involved in some sort of Gladiator-style combat.
-- there was something to do with the sea? Ship-travel?
-- it was the first of a series/trilogy.
-- if you looked through the stone-eye-thing, then sometimes people (prophets?) could see the future.
-- the stone eye thing looks like the thing from Star Trek's City on the Edge of Forever, except it's up on a cliff or a mountain."


Does this ring a bell for anyone?

posted by bettafish to writing & language (5 comments total)

If you have Usenet access, posting these to rec.arts.sf.written usually has a very high success rate.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:41 PM on June 11

Stephen King's The Eyes of the Dragon?
posted by PenDevil at 2:02 PM on June 11

This sounds very vaguely familiar to a book I read that I'm fairly sure was by Margaret Weiss (of Dragonlance fame) but a quick search on Amazon turned up nothing. I probably read this book between 93 and 95 if that might help with the timeframe.
posted by Octoparrot at 8:27 PM on June 11

Fortress in the Eye of Time by CJ Cherryh is the first in a series and has a cover something like what you describe.

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan is the first in a series, but otherwise no clear match.

Eye in the Sky by Philip K. Dick has a cover soooooomething like what you describe but otherwise no clear match.

I tried looking through this site that includes past covers of SF and fantasy books. Try using this string in google:
"the eye of" site:http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:52 PM on June 11

It's not any of the ones mentioned so far. Not a "big name" writer like Jordan or King, she says. And there was an Arabic influence to the society.

Thanks for the suggestions so far, folks.
posted by bettafish at 3:29 PM on June 12