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  • Accidental Innuendo: The Pocket edition of The Serpent sports a buffet of phallic symbols on the cover, thus accurately underscoring the novel's sadomasochistic elements.
  • Contested Sequel: The final book Some Summer Lands, written a whole decade after the original finale The City is widely disliked by fans. Points against it include its unexpected change of narrator, meandering plot, and a very disturbing child molestation subplot with no resolution.
  • Fair for Its Day: Cija refers to her transfemme friend Lel with male nouns and pronouns which may make modern readers uncomfortable, but the fact that a book from the 1960s has a sympathetic trans character who gets a happy ending is remarkable in itself.
  • Genius Bonus: One member of the Fantasywithbite LiveJournal community described the world-building in this series as "catastrophic," but this defect is the result of Gaskell's reliance on the reader's knowledge of unorthodox prehistory. The sources in the first two books' bibliography can point the confused reader in the right direction. note 
  • Iron Woobie: Cija can endure anything: kidnapping, rape, war, arranged marriage....
  • Squick: Be prepared for rape and bestiality if you decide to read these novels. If any of this bothers you, don't read the last book (see Contested Sequel above).

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