This book is thirty five years old (with a nice, new cover) and in hindsight, that’s absolutely obvious when reading it. The plot is very quick, very fun, and very fast. I think today, you would have gotten a lot more detail about the various intrigues.
Basically, the evil Duke of Tilbury is out to kill the queen, and a merry band of some of her other subjects want to save her. Why they want to save her is a little beyond me – she’s not actually that nice. But the actual merry band is a lot of fun.
I’ll confess, I sometimes miss the slimmer books I read in the 80s and 90s. Books these days are more often ponderous tomes with lots of detail and maybe lots of story. It’s a little refreshing to just take a quick dip.