For this installment of Brief Book Reviews, I’ve chosen my most recent read, Changa’s Safari, written by the prolific and imaginative Milton J. Davis. Without spoiling too much of this rollicking, swashbuckling adventure, I will say that it was an insta-buy once I saw the cover art and read the back cover blurb at JordanCon 2017. With several books in this series and continuing collections of Changa stories, Davis has combined the fast-paced action-packed sea sagas of Sinbad with the well-researched–but clearly alternative history–versions of 15th century Africa, Arabia, and Asia to create a fun, immersive environment for endless storytelling. In these stories, magic and myth walk the world alongside the medieval and mundane, so there is plenty of sword-and-sorcery action to keep any fan of fantasy and/or alternative history happy.

In this first collection, we are presented with three different kibatu (books), which are novelettes or novellas tied together by…