Mount TBR 2014 Challenge discussion
Level 8: Mt. Olympus (150 +)
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Brian Blessed Goes Back To Mars! or, Up The Hill Backwards!
#94 - The Mystery of Mary Rogers by Rick GearyAnother entry in Geary's series of books about Victorian-era murders, this time focusing on the unsolved case of Mary Rogers in New York. Lots of intriguing details, but the case has so little of substance attached to it that the book ends up feeling gossamer thin.
#95 - The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack: 40 Modern and Classic Lovecraftian Stories by various (anthology)Victory Lap! I bought this anthology ebook last year on something of a whim, partly out of curiosity about the Mythos (which isn't specifically focused on Cthulhu, but on a broad pantheon of Old Ones, Great Ones, Many-Angled Ones, etc) thanks to its influence on Charles Stross' Laundry tales, and partly because I like anthologies...and this one is massive (not as huge as the Civitas Weird Tales series, which I also bought last year, which clock in at 101 stories apiece) with 40 stories, including a couple of novellas. For $1.99 it's a bit of a bargain!
While not every story is a shining gem (some are quite turgid), there are more than enough good outings here to justify the price, including a couple of hilarious short-shorts. Some will be familiar to some readers (the Lovecraft pieces, for instance), others will be unknown, and a couple will seem quite tangential to the main part of the Mythos, even to the neophyte.
I enjoyed this enough that I hope Wildside Press does further Mythos collections of this nature.
#96 - Assignment Unicorn by Edward S. AaronsSam Durrell was one of the American answers to James Bond, although the novels seem to try to stay more on the Fleming side of the equation than the films, making Durrell a ruthless bastard...although a well traveled and well learned one. Slightly pulpy in the Doc Savage vein, though less prone to purple prose, Durrell's adventures take him around the world on missions for the super-super-secret Department K of the CIA. Girls, guns, and slightly over the top villains ensue.
This outing comes late in the series, with Durrell up against superhuman operatives and a nesting doll parade of bad guys. The writing tends towards the terse, although detailed, and there's every impression at the end that Durrell is ready to hang it up and settle down with the latest girl (who happens to be the daughter of his dead friend, so, ummmm....)
#97 - Assignment Sulu Sea by Edward S. AaronsSam Durrell in search of a vanished submarine in a South Pacific island chain, basically, though the gorgeous daughter of an old family friend gets mixed into things, as do local political unrest. Good old fashioned pulpy spy action.
#98 - Assignment Palermo by Edward S. AaronsBit of a potboiler as Durrell gets sent to deal with problems coming out of a Sicilian syndicate called Fratelli del la Notte. Poor old Sam gets turned into a bit of a football in this one.
#99 - Assignment Angelina by Edward S. AaronsOne of the earlier books in the Sam Durell series (#6), this one is much more of a noir thriller than those from the 1960s onwards. A quartet of bad guys with various motives are killing their way across the US in search of the missing part of a Nazi chemical formula, and Durell finds himself seconded to an even more secret agency than K Division who task him to keep tabs on the crew. Violent, grim, and relentless.
#100 - Assignment School for Spies by Edward S. AaronsDurell goes rogue when his ex-girlfriend appears to defect, and thereafter there's much running, jumping, and standing still. One of the lesser entries by far, with some truly clunky writing, especially in the ham-fisted romantic subplots. It's also one that seems most obvious about borrowing from Bond -- and not just from the books, either, unusually.
#101 - The Man Who Sold the World: David Bowie and the 1970s by Peter DoggettDoggett goes step by step through Bowie's carer and music from the late 1960s to the end of the 1970s, touching on pre-"Space Oddity" and post-1980 at the end of the book. Mostly, it's a step by step look at the music, and really doesn't hold a candle to Nicholas Pegg's more comprehensive book.
#102 - Assignment Bangkok by Edward S. AaronsDurell is sent out to track down a potentially rogue agent in Thailand, and tasked, while he's there to shut don some of the narcotics trade in the north. The book starts in media res, and ends at least three times, and in between is strikingly haphazard and occasionally weird in slightly disturbing ways.
#103 - Four Weird Tales by Algernon BlackwoodThe majority of this collection is taken up by the turgid, overwritten, and seemingly endless literary haboob that is "Sand." The other stories are fairly minor, though well-written. "Sand," however, is turgid, endless, and very hard to wade through.
#104 - The Thousand Coffins Affair by Michael AvalloneThe very first of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. tie-in novels. Alas, it's one of the lesser entries in the series, and Avallone doesn't have much of the feel of the show or the characters (possibly because this was written before the show had actually aired), leaving it a rather thin and generic piece of spy-fi.
#105 - Alice in Wonderland by Raven Gregory, et alAlice and company get a hypersexualized horror overhaul in this series (which so often refers across to other stories from this publisher's line that it sometimes gets a bit confusing.) Very shiny, and very poor.
#106 - Beyond Wonderland by Raven Gregory , et alI think I need to sort these in order...although, again, we have Wonderland conflated with horror, and much distraction in the art with its preposterous female designs. This one follows the daughter of the shadow Alice, who is pursued by her brother, who's become the new Mad Hatter. Concludes with a whacking great horror movie cliche, too.
#107 - Illinois Traction System...An Album (Trolley Sparks/CERA Bulletin #98) edited by William C. JanssenTime for me to get stuck into the backlog in the collection of trolley and railway books, beginning with this overview of the Illinois Traction System (which eventually became the Illinois Terminal Railway)and some of the ancillary systems owned by ITS in other states. Interestingly enough, this volume starts out with an apology for what the editor considered to be an abbreviate book (due to storage flooding destroying the previous CERA Bulletin, forcing its replacement, and causing the budget for this one to be clipped.)
For all the abbreviation, it's still a grand volume, stuffed with images and informative text. It's not quite the handsome tome that later CERA bulletins are -- there was a distinct path of improvement when it comes to book design -- but it will bear happily with occasional re-reading.
#108 - Invincible, Vol. 16: Family Ties by Robert Kirkman and Ryan OttleyI was blowing through these so fast last year that I went right over this entry in the series, and just now discovered that fact. I don't think I missed much, frankly, as much of it is just Kirkman setting the stage for the next big twist.
#109 - The Bridges at Toko-ri by James A. MichenerAn at-times quite lyrical short novel about Navy carrier warfare during the Korean War, with a lot to say about courage, pragmatism, and civilian disregard.
#110 - Sacramento Northern Album by Ira L. SwettA copiously illustrated book about the long-gone Sacramento Northern. For some reason Swett decided to produce this one using the Duotone process, with the colour being a green to hint at the colouring of the cars. It doesn't work too well, I'm afraid, but I still enjoyed going through this book and reading the informative text. Books such as this tend to impart a sense of nostalgia in me for things I could not have actually experienced -- I would love to have ridden the SN in its various modes.
#111 - Scar Tissue by Marcus SakeyShort, sharp, sometimes brutal...stories that burrow into humanity in sometimes benign-sounding tones that harbour a sometimes poignant and sometimes vicious edge. The only real disappointment is that there isn't more here...but Sakey is still young.
#112 - Secrets of the Cell by Royden LeppThere's a curious mix of World War One-era steampunk and the bucolic wonder of the northern prairies in this book, which renders it engaging even when the reader realizes that it's actually the second chapter in a lengthy story, and so starts somewhat on the run (and in flashback) and finishes equally as much on the run. The thread of the story is easy to pick up, fortunately, and the tale itself cracks along at an impressive pace without seeming shallow. I would like to read the other installments.
#113 - Panel to Panel Volume 2: Expanding the Universe by Randy Stradley and sundry participants#114 - Star Wars: Visionaries edited by Jeremy Barlow
Two books from Dark Horse that have a focus on the art end of things (Star Wars has always had quite a record when it comes to producing various kinds of art books.)
The first is an overview of the contribution Dark Horse has made to both the Expanded Universe (mostly now relegated to the Legacy line with Disney's choice to abandon most of the EU and start over) and to the prequels, with some interesting minor synergy between the comics and the three prequel films.
It's in some ways a clip episode for the comics, but I found it interesting, especially as Dark Horse acquiring the Star Wars license single-handedly revived interest in the films, kickstarted a new torrent of lucrative merchandising, and likely revived Lucas' interest in the films. Yes, that led to the prequels, and to the monolithic enterprise of today, but it also led to the second book of this pair.
Star Wars: Visionaries is a bit of an odd duck -- ten concept artists who worked on various of the prequels (and all on Episode III) were given a chance to contribute their takes on various corners of the Star Wars universe. Not all of them delivered stories, as such; two deliver beautiful poster galleries, and there's one story that's essentially fine art with a linking theme and occasional captions explaining the story. One story is an exercise in Eurocentric psychedelia, and three are quite pedestrian efforts with lovely art (including a story that brings back Darth Maul, and may have been the inspiration for Maul's later return in The Clone Wars.) Interesting stuff.
#115 - Phoenix, Vol. 1: Dawn by Osamu Tezuka#116 - Phoenix, Vol. 2: Future by Osamu Tezuka
The first two segments of Tezuka's epic and unfinished story of humanity and Japan past and future, weaving together cosmology, magic, spirituality, science fiction, fantasy and the firebird, with liberal doses of humour. The artwork is relentlessly cartoonish in Tezuka's inimitable style, but that just makes the impact of the horrific moments all that much more severe.
The story also yo-yos between past and future as Tezuka draws a line through his concerns about the way mankind is going.
There are twelve volumes altogether, running to nearly 4,000 pages. Unfortunately, Tezuka never quite finished the project before he died.
#117 - Gentleman Jim Mooney by Daniel BestA rather slim effort chronicling the life and work of comics artist Jim Mooney. I read this in the ebook edition, which is unfortunately plagued with problems -- much of the art is missing, and what is there renders horribly on a Kindle. The lack of material seems to be a result of Mooney having been a solid, stand-up guy and a solid, dependable, if not quite brilliant, artist. Like many, though, I remain a fan of Mooney's Supergirl artwork to this day.
#118 - Jago & Litefoot: Series 4 by variousThe inestimable team of Victorian gadabouts are up to their necks in trouble yet again, the focus of a mysterious pair of troublemakers (whose verbal tag-team bit is very 1960s bad guys) and one Professor Dark, whoever he might be. *ahem* Also in the mix is Leela of the Sevateam, as feral and unsubtle as ever even if she does have to bear with the ridiculous clothing of Victorian times.
#119 - Dead Men Kill: A Murder Mystery of Wealth, Power, and the Living Dead by L. Ron HubbardA 1930s pulp outing by Elron, and, boy howdy does it hit the pulp tropes hard. Hard boiled detective, femme fatales, cackling villain with gimmicks, and zombies to boot. While the accuracy of Hubbard's zombies is questionable (despite the methodology of creation bearing some resemblance how it was done in Haiti)that isn't the point -- the point is that the full-cast audio reading of this tale shows it to be a passable Saturday Matinee Serial tale, even though some the writing is rather dreadful (welcome to the pulps! Thrills, chills, damsels in distress, and all of the turgid dialogue you can stand.)
By no means worthy of five stars, but highly entertaining while doing other things...!
#120 - The Making of The Empire Strikes Back by J.W. RinzlerI'm probably going to reread this at some point in the near future, as I found it quite enthralling and fascinating. It's exactly what it says in the title, but so much more besides -- and none of it is sugar-coated. This means that not only do you get the story behind George Lucas mounting a sequel to his runaway hit Star Wars, but wrestling with the creation of a hugely ambitious entertainment company that would focus as much on merchandising as on production -- as well as sowing the seeds of revolution in the fields of sound, editing, and computer graphics (Lucasfilm was the proud parent of a little operation called Pixar, for instance.) It was a vastly bigger operation than anyone realized at the time, and had things gone even slightly wrong, it would have spelled the end of Lucas' career and ambitions.
Excellent book, well illustrated, and, in the ebook version, enhanced with video and audio (although this doesn't play on many ebook readers.)
#121 - Richard Stark's Parker: Slayground by Darwyn CookePerfectly good adaptation of an atypical Parker story, in which Parker is on the run after a heist goes pear-shaped due to weather and the nervousness of a getaway driver. Parker's only refuge is an amusement park that's closed for the winter -- and as he quickly discovers, there's only one way out. Worse, his escape was witnessed by the son of the local mob boss, and some crooked cops...and they decide to come after the money he has.
The problem here isn't with the adaptation so much as it's an issue with the source material -- disbelief is hard to suspend, under the circumstances, even if you accept that the park itself is ringed by a twelve foot wide moat and an electrified fence. Parker makes truly amazing use of elements of the park to set traps, which the bad guys duly walk into -- I had trouble finding any tension in the story.
A short story rounds out the book, heavily abbreviating another Parker novel.
#122 - The Art of Vampirella by Davide Barzi (editor)A glossy art book with a main focus on the post-1992 incarnation of improbable alien vampire Vampirella. Includes interviews and text pieces to provide some distraction from the always improbable and often appalling artwork.
#123 - X-Men: From the Ashes by Chris Claremont, et alwolverine in Japan getting jilted (he cries), Scott Summers goes north with is father and brother and meets Madelyne, the spitting image of the late Jean Grey, and Charles Xavier struggles with walking again. Oh, and Kitty Pryde becomes a brat, adopts Lockheed The Dragon, and smooches Piotr Rasputin.
Yep, it's more of that good old fashioned X-Men soap opera, much of which is entertaining and much of which is painful to read. Still, in many respects this was the good old days, before the series went right off the rails.
#124 - Shock III: 13 Electrifying Tales by Richard MathesonThis was a lot of fun to read -- while I knew Matheson was an excellent writer, I didn't really have an idea of his range and his capacity for he ludicrous, which is very much in evidence here ("Miss Stardust" is the story of a PR agent who's in the middle of the shenanigans when an alien arrives with objections to the title of the titular contest, and then there's "'Tis The Season To Be Jelly.")
The book concludes with "Nightmare At 20,000 Feet" which was adapted into a classic Twilight Zone episode (and later into a not so classic segment in the Twilight Zone film.)
This time last year I was done...! At at this point on Dec 17th, in the ICU.Must pick up speed...!
#125 - Booster Gold, Vol. 1: 52 Pick-Up by Geoff Johns, Jeff Katz, Dan JurgensI'm always a sucker for time travel/dimension hopping shenanigans, and this book delivers nicely on that as Booster Gold is inspired to put aside his old ways and work on fixing the timestream. Big plus: Skeets is the snarkiest security droid there ever was.
#126 - Booster Gold, Vol. 2: Blue and Gold by Geoff Johns, Jeff Katz, Dan JurgensMore adventures in time and alternate timelines as Booster makes some very bad choices and nearly unravels everything.
#127 - Booster Gold, Vol. 3: Reality Lost by Dan Jurgens#128 - Booster Gold, Vol. 4: Day of Death by Dan Jurgens
#129 - Booster Gold, Vol. 5: The Tomorrow Memory by Dan Jurgens
#130 - Booster Gold, Volume 6: Past Imperfect by Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis, et al
Not much to add on finishing this set -- read all at once, the stories can seem repetitive (Booster has to prevent changes to the time line, winds up trying to save people despite knowing it won't work, gets thumped for it.) There are often nice twists and turns (well, until you reach the last volume, when Giffen and DeMatteis try to recreate their JLI days, only with less subtlety and far more crudity) but several mysteries are left unsolved, and a couple of the collections suffer from collisions with various of the massive events DC ran pre-Flashpoint.
Booster Gold is a character with many interesting possibilities as a reluctant multiversal troubleshooter. Sadly, those possibilities rarely seem to get used in interesting ways.
#131 - Doctor Who: Tales from the Vault by Jonathan Morris#132 - Doctor Who: Council of War by Simon Barnard
Two stories featuring companions and associates ofcthe Doctor. The first is a themed anthology while the second features Sergeant Benton going undercover at the behest of Three. Okay, but nothing special.
#133 - Doctor Who: The Perpetual Bond by Simon Guerrier#134 - Doctor Who: The Forbidden Time by David Lock
#135 - Doctor Who: Ferril's Folly by Peter Anghelides
I sometimes wonder if Big Finish are burning out -- the Doctor versus commodity traders would suggest it. More two-hander stories, with varying levels of performance and generally flat writing.
#136 - Zombie Lover by Piers AnthonyAppropriate title and theme, as the story shambles around in circles, occasionally falling into a thicket of truly bad puns.
#138 - The Making of Return of the Jedi by J. W. RinzlerA quite gratifying tome, this, which details the maniacal production of Return Of The Jedi, driven by Lucas not wanting to repeat the problems of Empire while wanting to outdo the first two films in every aspect -- which resulted in some boundary-breaking visual effects work. All the same, many things went awry, from 20th Century Fox being recalcitrant about the distribution deal and demanding the right to make their own sequels, to Carrie Fisher's increasingly erratic behaviour, a director who seems to have been hopelessly out of his depth and hopelessly pressured by Lucas, to Lucas himself secretly in the throes of a divorce proceeding brought by his then-wife, Marcia.
Rinzler does a fantastic job of both clinically laying out the details, almost day by day, and imparting a sense of the passion and desperation involved in the production. Lucas would abandon Star Wars for the best part of fifteen years after this, until renewed interest brought him back to do the Special Editions, and then the prequels.
I'd be delighted to see Rinzler do a book about the post-revival efforts, frankly, and eventually something on the new efforts. Given the amount of work involved, though, I suspect Rinzler himself would rather not...!
#139 - The Radioactive Camel Affair by Peter LeslieTHRUSH has stolen an amount of uranium and is shipping it across the Middle East via camel train heading for the Sudan. Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin are sent to get it back, and find out what THRUSH is planning. Leslie does a decent job of catching the voices of the characters, although the book itself is decidedly more dark than many of the episodes were, given that it delves into Arab massacres of Africans.
#140 - Visions of Sugar Plums by Janet EvanovichThe first of the Stephanie Plum holiday books, set during a very hectic Christmas period as Stephanie Tries to track down the errant Sandy Claws and winds up with the handsome but strange Diesel as a mysteriously-powered sidekick.
Frothy, thin, but fun if you're in the mood for broad comedy. The family scenes are a particular highlight.
#141 - Where Time Stands Still by Dayton WardSplit across two time periods, this Starfleet Corps of Engineers book is actually a sequel to the "Time Trap" episode of the Star Trek animated series, and includes a character from the Marvel Comics spin-offs for good measure. An okay read.
#142 - DC Universe Presents, Vol. 1: Deadman/Challengers of the Unknown by Paul Jenkins, Dan DiDio, and variousTwo stories presenting updated takes on Deadman and The Challengers Of The Unknown (who were something of an inspiration originally for the Fantastic Four.) Of the two Deadman gets the better outing, but only because the Challengers tale is warmed over tripe and only part of the tàle to boot.
#143 - The Clockwork Woman by Claire BottPart of the Time Hunter series that spun off from the Telos hardcover Doctor Who books, and less science fiction or fantasy than historical fiction that happens to have an automaton at its center. An odd book, but intriguingly written.
#144 - The Sky Devil by L. Ron HubbardMore two-fisted adventure pulp antics from Hubbard, as a pilot finds himself fighting for his life in the middle of a Middle Eastern desert. Cheerfully problematic in all kinds of cultural ways, so very much of its age. The audio version tries very hard, but really doesn't succeed in grabbing the attention.
#145 - Essential Monster of Frankenstein, Vol. 1 by Gary Friederich, Mike Ploog, and various othersStarts out as a sequel to Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, and goes through a roaring rampage of revenge phase, at which point the monster runs into Dracula, and things go downhill from there. Fairly simple stuff from a story-telling viewpoint, and might be considered radical in terms of tone if the Warren books hadn't already trod that ground thoroughly by the time this appeared.
#146 - The Doors of Perception by Aldous HuxleyHuxley's epistle on the effects of mescaline, both a journal of his experiments with it and a meditation on its effects on a philosophical and spiritual level. In many ways a precursor to the coming of LSD and its application by psychiatrists prior to Timothy Leary's attempt at using it for a worldwide spiritual awakening.
#147 - Riding the Bullet by Stephen KingA young man hitchhiking to visit his ailing mother finds himself riding with a dead man...or so it seems. Or was it a dream? Either way, the end result is not so good. The story rests mainly on the characters, and the protagonist is just kind of ordinary....
#148 - Sayonara, streetcar by Ralph FortyA interesting book about the streetcar systems of Japan -- but not the major systems, such as the one in Tokyo. Rather, Forty's brief here is to cover all of the smaller systems, the little rural routes, and so on. Sadly, at the time the book was written, most of these smaller systems had ceased operation, leaving only photographs and basic documentation behind.
#149 - Weird Tales: 101 Weird, Strange, and Supernatural Stories Vol. 6 by various and assortedIn some respects this series can easily be classed as shovelware -- essentially cramming a seemingly random selection of stories into one bulging volume, with no real sense of order (the closest it comes is the grouping of several stories by a single author) or theme, aside from the vague "weird tales" notion. Science fiction, fantasy, and horror all rub shoulders herein, with stories coming from a span of a couple of hundred years and a bewildering variety of sources. While there are authors who are very familiar to me, there are more I've never heard of.
Much of the material included is excellent, although much is fairly terrible (there's some science fiction here that makes the Perry Rhodan tales look brilliant) and at least as much is more or less mediocre.
Mount TBR 2014 Challenge
Books mentioned in this topic
Essential Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 3 (other topics)Glass Empires (other topics)
Weird Tales: 101 Weird, Strange, and Supernatural Stories Vol. 6 (other topics)
Sayonara, streetcar (other topics)
Riding the Bullet (other topics)
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Originally a Shell Scott novel that had the serial numbers filed off,with the protagonist being renamed Mark Logan and getting his hair dyed black. It's essentially a mostly serious piece of pulp writing that revolves around hypnotism and murder. It's Shell Scott in all but name.