March to Other Worlds Day 2: The Valley of Despair by Chris L. Adams

Day 2 The Valley of Despair by Chris L. Adams

For the second day of the March to Other Worlds we turn to author and painter, Chris L. Adams. Adams is an expert on the pulp era of science fiction and you can see the influence of those masters in his writings. The Valley of Despair would fit well in a collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs stories. It only takes one short chapter to convince you you’re in for a thrill ride.

 

German WWI pilot Erik von Mendelsohn has crashed in the jungle and is trying to survive a group of apes that have taken the wrong kind of interest in him. Desperate to escape, he reaches the edge of the jungle near a high cliff face and the apes who are in hot pursuit…refuse to follow him past the tree line. It’s a simple idea very subtly conveyed in the story, but it set all the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. These totally aggressive and fearsome animals won’t follow our hero as he attempts to climb the cliff face to get away from them. It’s difficult not to ask yourself—what are the apes afraid of? What the heck is Erik getting himself into? And the tension just keeps ratcheting higher from this point forward.

 

Erik is a well thought out character—he’s smart, a bit impulsive, and a little too curious for his own good. The supporting cast is equally interesting. I don’t want to give away the plot, but the people Erik finds and gets into trouble with are equally brave and capable—and the problem they have to confront is better thought out than a lot of “lost world” adventure-style stories I’ve encountered. In short if you want a fast-paced well-developed adventure story with great characters, you should give Valley of Despair a try.