Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 70

Review: The Belly of the Beast by Desmond Doane

The Belly of the Beast by Desmond Doane

Who is the “she” who ghosts warn will betray Ford Atticus Ford? It’s an increasingly important question as Ford and Mike prepare for their final confrontation to save a little girl from a demon they believe to be at the “right hand” of Satan. The problem is, there are a lot of women close to the problem including the little seven year old girl herself who the reader knows is being touched by the demon in her dreams every night.

 

The final book in the Graveyard Classified trilogy is every bit the conclusion I was hoping for. Ford and Mike are back and in every single chapter the odds against them seem to grow worse. But they have grown tremendously in the past two books and it’s easy to believe that their heads and values are finally in the right place to wage war with the devil. It’s no longer about the money, or the fame, or their wrecked careers. They’re putting it all on the line for a little girl whom the reader is pretty sure is being manipulated by pure evil into making them lose their souls.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed this trilogy and this book is the best of the lot. Stake out some time. You won’t want to read them one at a time, but straight through like it was one massive book.

 

Review: The White Night by Desmond Doane

The White Night by Desmond Doane

Doane picks up the stories of Ford and Mike in two concurrently running mystery/adventures where in Ford finds himself going up against the mysterious black-eyed children and Mike finds himself going head-to-head with another demon. We get much deeper into Mike’s disaster of a life this time, which proves even more interesting than the demon he is preparing to confront.

 

As for Ford, his problem is brought to him by a woman he hates, which again proves he is a fundamentally decent man. He puts away the very real harm this woman has done him to try and save her life.

 

Both mysteries were absolutely fascinating, but there’s an even darker third storyline developing. Little Chelsea Hopper, now seven years old, is still being haunted by the demon that injured her. Unfortunately, she can’t tell anyone, and we can watch it corrupting the poor little girl. That cannot bode well for Ford as he tries to learn enough to save the little girl he failed so disastrously when she was five years old.

 

This novel charges forward from beginning to end and will leave you ready to leap immediately into the next (and final?) book of the series.

 

Review: The Dark Man by Desmond Doane

The Dark Man by Desmond Doane

Two years ago, Ford Atticus Ford lost everything over a terrible decision to allow a five-year-old girl to be put in danger on his hit television show, Graveyard Classified. He literally encouraged her to confront a demon by herself on live television and she was clawed bloody by the monster. His misjudgment (and doesn’t that seem like a very understated way to describe what he did) destroyed his life, but he has slowly put it back together by seeking redemption through doing low profile, mostly pro bono, work for police departments across the country who have run into dead ends and need a miracle to advance their investigations. Part of the genius of this story is that Ford is a very sympathetic character and Doane makes him that way by making Ford very honest with himself—even when he doesn’t fully understand why he made the choices he did that led to the little girl being injured.

 

The novel revolves around Ford’s latest bit of police work, but it never strays far from the event that wrecked his life. A woman either committed suicide or was murdered years earlier and her diary has surfaced heating up a cold case. The problem—the investigating detective has a terrifying supernatural encounter in the woman’s house and calls Ford for help. That investigation is creepy and fascinating and we get to see how Ford took his fascination with the supernatural and made a television show out of it. We also realize very quickly that ghosts, demons, etc. are very real.

 

When the supernatural threat proves to be much more serious than Ford at first suspected, he reaches out to his former best friend, Mike, who won’t speak to him because of what happened to the little girl. Again, Doane shows his strength as an author. Mike had been the voice of reason and caution who didn’t do everything he could have to stop the danger to little Chelsea, but certainly looked to be the one with the stronger moral compass. Except—now that he’s broke as a result of some bad investments and his marriage has collapsed, Mike wants Ford to do a follow up Graveyard Classified movie to finish the investigation that broke the show. He wants to take advantage of Chelsea again, as do the girl’s parents, because their princely court-awarded damages have run out. It’s all utterly fascinating. The man the world vilifies for his callousness is the only one actually worried about the little girl.

 

Despite their badly damaged friendship, Ford and Mike have to figure out how to pull it all together if they are to defeat the new demon and save it’s intended victim. This would have been a great story in and of itself, but be warned, Doane has larger plans for Ford and Mike. There problems don’t end with this book.

 

Review: The Monsters Know What They're Doing by Keith Ammann

The Monsters Know What They’re Doing by Keith Ammann

This is a revolutionary book about the creatures encountered in the game Dungeons and Dragons and it will appeal to two kinds of people. The first—that includes myself—are people who have years of playing the game under their belt (for many of us mostly in the distant pass) and enjoy nostalgically wandering through key events (like the creatures of the game). For those people, the audiobook may be the ideal method of absorbing the information.

 

The other group are active Dungeon Masters trying to improve their games by making their monsters more interesting. They are going to want a paper or electronic copy as this volume will serve as a valuable resource to them in planning their next adventures.

 

What Ammann has done here is analyze key groups of monsters and created rational tactics for them given their strengths, weaknesses, and known proclivities. It makes for fascinating reading. I was shocked by how many times he suggests the creatures would break and flee after taking a certain amount of damage. When I was gaming, monsters rarely ran, which was convenient as they take their experience and treasure with them when they depart.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed getting into the mindset of creatures as disparate as a bugbear, a displacer beast, a dragon, and a common bandit. The book is conveniently organized by type of creature and just fascinating to read. D&D games are going to get a lot better if Dungeon Masters take advantage of this valuable resource.

 

Review: Mirkwood by Steve Hillard narrated by William L. Hahn

Mirkwood by Steve Hillard narrated by William L. Hahn

This book is a must read for anyone who loves J.R.R. Tolkien’s, The Lord of the Rings. The novel is based upon the idea that Middle Earth exists and that Tolkien had access to several manuscripts which became his published works. In addition, he had several more manuscripts that he did not publish, and the dark lord wants one of them (maybe all) destroyed as part of his “come back” strategy. He is trying to wipe out a tale of resistance to him by destroying a young hobbit woman who has a peculiar opportunity to frustrate him.

 

Yet that is only a small part of this book, because most of the action doesn’t happen in Middle Earth, it happens here, in our world with flashbacks to J.R.R. .Tolkien’s past and his decision to pass on these manuscripts. It’s a mystery story in which the young heiress to these manuscripts is trying to find out what they are and what happened to her grandfather who was their caretaker for so long. Oh, and she’s also trying to survive an assassin from Middle Earth who has come to kill her and destroy those precious manuscripts.

 

This is a tale of beauty and sophisticated layering of plot brought to even-more-engaging life by the fantastic vocal talents of narrator William L. Hahn. Like the original Lord of the Rings which inspired it, I don’t think you can glean every depth of this novel in a single perusal. I’m going to have to read it again.

 

March to Other Worlds Day 31: Legend by David Gemmell

Day 31 Legend by David Gemmell

David Gemmell, may he rest in peace, was one of the great fantasy writers of our time and this is the book that launched his career. Gemmell had been diagnosed with cancer and says that he started this book to occupy his mind while he was in treatment. It’s unlike anything in the genre that I had ever read. A sixty-year-old legendary warrior comes out of a very short retirement to fight in one last helpless cause to try and save the Drenai people. Druss has been in every major battle for the past forty years, but none of the lost causes he turned around ever looked as bad as this one.

 

Gemmell gets inside the skull of his heroes, none of whom—not even Druss—are without serious flaws. This book will tap every emotion you have. There’s plenty of excitement, but there’s also outrage, and respect, and trepidation, and grief, and wonder, and horror as men and women struggle to find it in themselves to hold on one more hour so that millions of people they will never know have a chance to go on living.

 

This would be a remarkable novel for any writer to produce—but as a first novel it will just knock your socks off. And it’s only Gemmell’s first novel. He fought the cancer off long enough to give us at least a score more books and make a legend of his very own. I can’t think of a better person to end the March to Other Worlds 2021 on. Rest in peace, Mr. Gemmell.

 

 

March to Other Worlds Day 30: Outland by Dennis E. Taylor

Day 30 Outland by Dennis E. Taylor

Roughly 30 years ago, I read a (fondly remembered) book called The Wild Side by Steven Gould about a group of students who discover a portal to a parallel universe. Since then it seems like we come across parallel universes everywhere. The Heisenberg Corollary was spotlighted earlier in this year’s March to Other Worlds. Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber from last year’s March might be considered the ultimate parallel worlds series. Robert A. Heinlein has The Number of the Beast. King and Straub wrote The Talisman. And then there’s Peter Cawdron’s Maelstrom (March to Other Worlds 2020), Star Trek’s Mirror, Mirror, the whole Sliders series, and I really could go on and on.

 

Enter Outland by Dennis E. Taylor. In many ways it starts out like a Robert A. Heinlein novel. A group of college students has discovered a way to open a portal into another universe and immediately start thinking about how they can make money off of it. They realize that they will lose control of their invention if the government, a major corporation, or even their university learns of its existence, so they begin seeking other ways to make money. One of the worlds is suffering from a horrendous green-house-inspired catastrophe, but another appears to be a North America without humans. They adopt the most commonly used strategy among these sorts of books and go panning for gold.

 

Had that been all that Taylor had in mind, this would have been an alright book. College students do not put large amounts of gold up for sale without attracting attention and that created lots of good tension in the story. Fortunately, Taylor has a much better plot in mind. While these college students are exploring their new world, the super volcano beneath Yellowstone National Park is preparing to blow. When it does, it immediately changes the whole situation and the college students have to focus on how they are going to survive an extinction level event on our planet and how many people they can save. This plot twist turns an enjoyable book into an intensely exciting one. I can’t wait to see where it goes next.

 

March to Other Worlds Day 29: Ribbonworld by Richard Dee

Day 29: Ribbonworld by Richard Dee

As the March to Other Worlds winds to a close I turn back to a solid science fiction story with an excellent mystery. Ribbonworld opens like a scene from Dashiell Hammett, and while hero Miles Goram is not a hard-boiled detective, the novel keeps that Hammett-like feel as it builds a mystery around themes that the legendary author often wrote about. The opening scene sets the groundwork for the whole novel. Goram has arrived late in the domed city of Reevis and when he checks into his cheap hotel room, he finds a body in the bathroom—the body of the man he had traveled here to meet. Goram thought he had come to Reevis to review a new hotel, but his now-dead contact had a much bigger story in mind and Goram has to get to the truth behind it before someone kills him. The problem—absolutely no one seems to want him around—not the workers, not the local government, not the Balcom corporation—and it’s not easy to solve a mystery when no one wants to talk to you.

 

Yet Goram can’t help but dig and what he finds is…well I don’t want to spoil the novel for you. Suffice it to say that Dee has created a hero that it’s easy to get behind, and he puts enough clues out there that you have a legitimate chance not only to piece together what’s happening but to figure out the big surprises. So I think it’s fair to say Ribbonworld gives you a bit of Ellery Queen in a Dashiell Hammett plot set out in a realistic science fiction setting.

 

 

March to Other Worlds Day 28: Winterhaven by Gilbert M. Stack

Day 28 Winterhaven by Gilbert M Stack

For the 28th day of the March to Other Worlds I’d like to return to my own work and my fantasy series, Winterhaven. Depending on how you calculate it, I either began working on the world of Winterhaven when I was 12 or 21. Many of the ideas and concepts that became part of the book started very early, but a place called Winterhaven didn’t actually exist until I was a senior in college, and it didn’t become important to my plotting for a few years after that.

 

While I was in graduate school researching my dissertation in England, I wrote the first draft of the first novel, Winterhaven, and I spent the next two decades tinkering with it, eventually finishing the book and writing two sequels and planning many more. There have been times when the characters in this book were as real to me as people I actually knew.

 

In its largest sense, Winterhaven is the story of the last outpost of the Ardenesse who rallied to the call of their God, Vapin, and left their world to wage The War of Night in their current land. They have had their share of victories, defeats and betrayals, but now, centuries later the descendants of those original men and women think that the great deeds of their world are confined to the long past Age of Heroes. In Winterhaven, they begin to find out that they are very wrong and if my heroes and heroines survive the struggles of the first few books they will realize that the fate of many worlds will ultimately depend on the strength and courage of the last descendants of the Ardenesse and their Duchy of Winterhaven.

 

If you like solid military action, credible politics, and fascinating men and women struggling in a medieval fantasy world, you should take a look at Winterhaven, The First Snows, and The Blood of Torons.

 

March to Other Worlds Day 27 Ciaphas Cain by Sandy Mitchell

Day 27 Ciaphas Cain by Sandy Mitchell

The Ciaphas Cain series stands out in the Warhammer 40,000 collection because of its humorous tone. Based in style on George MacDonald’s Fraser’s Flashman character, Cain is an imperial commissar touted as a people’s hero, but who, according to his own memoirs was actually a self-aggrandizing coward and cad. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Cain truly doesn’t thrive on danger as his reputation suggests, but as you watch him do his job you realize he does do the right thing almost all the time—even if he would have you believe it is for all the wrong reasons. The result is a delightful, light-hearted, adventure story.

 

In the opening book of the series, For the Emperor, Cain takes on a new post and ends up in a complicated struggle between the inhabitants of a world, an alien species trying to take the planet, and the imperial guard. The aliens and the guard each have reasons for trying to keep war from breaking out, but someone on the planet seems determined to turn its cities into bloody battlefields. The action is very straightforward, but what exactly is going on is a mystery worth unravelling. A great first novel for a fun series.