(a 1997 gaming guide to the Viagens series authorized by de Camp), the action of The Hostage of Zir takes place in the year 2145 AD., falling between The Hand of Zei and The Prisoner of Zhamanak, and making it the seventh story set on Krishna in terms of chronology. Cambias's dating may be too early, however, as internal evidence in Zhamanak indicates that it occurs shortly after Hostage, while internal evidence in The Bones of Zora indicates that it occurs shortly after Zhamanak, with the events of "The Virgin of Zesh" happening between. As "Virgin" is securely dated to 2150, this could shift the dating of Hostage and Zhamanak as late as 2148 and 2149, respectively. Reception Publishers Weekly calls the book a "cheerfully bloody and bawdy adventure, which will strike home to anyone who's experienced conducted travel." Rosemary Herbert, writing for Library Journal, is less enchanted: "The book is lively at times, particularly when Reith is forced to marry an alien, but for the most part it reads like a traveler's nightmare, full of stereotyped characters, unsympathetically portrayed." Lester del Rey in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact has no such complaints, proclaiming "[t]here's only one way to describe [the book]; it's a new Krishna novel. And like de Camp's other popular Krishna novels, it's a wry and wacky story of a human forced to contend with the semicivilized and semihuman cultures of an alien world where Murphy's law always holds good, and nothing ever goes according to plan. You could call it sword-and-sorcery, since swords are buckled with a touch of swash, and human science is a sort of magic to the too-human but egg-laying Krishnans. But the adventure is always cock-eyed." He concludes that "[i]f you've read and enjoyed the other stories of Krishna, you'll want this one. If you haven't read any, this is a good one to start with." William Mattathias Robins takes a middle tone: "[d]e Camp's travelers are a misfit crew of oversexed, silly, selfish, xenophobic outlanders. Reith, however, is an appealing young man who is literally transformed from an introvert to a composed, even heroic, leader. Most of the action is seen through his eyes, so the reader shares in his growth, and the novel proves successful." Don D'Ammassa, addressing this and other late entries in the Viagens series, writes "[t]he quality of the series remains undiminished in [these] volumes, which combine good-natured