Flying Colours by C.S. Forester

I was pretty lukewarm about the second Hornblower novel, Ship of the Line, but it ended on a cliff-hanger and I wanted to see how it came out.  This book was a big step up, rivaling the first novel in its scope and adventure.  Following his capture by the French, Hornblower, Lt. Bush and Coxswain Brown are being escorted to Paris to be tried for piracy and almost certainly executed by Bonaparte.  Ultimately it's almost impossible to tell much more about the novel without getting in to spoilers.  

I will say, that while I don't really like Hornblower, he is a pretty fully realized character.  He has self-doubts, good qualities, serious flaws, etc.  The supporting characters...not so much.  But this is a pretty solid adventure yarn.  Easily the equal of the first novel and significantly better than the second.  

Finished the last batch of stories from the Marion Zimmer Bradley edited Sword and Sorceress IV last night/this morning.



"Spell of Binding" by Richard Corwin
"Storm God" by Deborah Wheeler
"Die Like a Man" by L.D. Woeltjen
"Death and the Ugly Woman" by Bruce Arthurs
"Bloodstones" by Deborah Vogel

now I am only alternating between 4 anthologies at the moment. This volume was solid, but a slight step down from previous volumes, but still had a few really good stories in it, and a lot of just solid stuff. There was nothing in it that I felt was terrible, just a few that felt pedestrian, but you are going to have highs and lows in any anthology.

-M

This has been on my radar for a bit, but I've been on the fence whether to order it or not. I might have to pull the trigger later this spring when I clear the mass of anthologies I am currently sampling from.

-M

The Flying Sorcerers
David Gerrald and Larry Niven





I almost feel like this book couldn't decide if it really wanted to be satire or if it wanted to be a straight 'modern man stuck without technology' story.

The plot is pretty basic... a man from a space faring race is investigation a primitive world with some interesting characteristics and gets stuck planet side due to the antics of the local Stone age village. Because the planet is odd... he needs to fly over the water 1/2 the world away to get back to a place where he can call his ship, so he marshalls the locals to try to build a flying machine (turned out to be a sory of Zeppelin, complete with dangerous Hydrogen)

Along the way there are a few funny bits as the primitive people discover some modern things, but overall it's not nearly as funny as others. There are some interesting 'rebuilding tech' bits as well, but such a theme is handled far better in other stories. Nothing terrible per say, but just not particularly good either.

Famous Monster Movie Art of Basil Gogos ed by Kerry Gammill and J. David Spurlock

Art books are weird to review.  One doesn't generally purchase an art book if one isn't already a fan of the artist.  At least I don't.  I suppose your mileage may vary.  So really it's about how the package is presented and what supporting material there is.  And that is even secondary, because you're mostly here for the pictures.  At least I am.  

I grew up at the tail end of the "monster kid" era.  If I'd been born fifteen or so years earlier I'd have hit it square.  But monsters were still a thing when I was young.  You could find Famous Monsters, Creepy, Eerie and the last of Marvel's monster comics on the newsstands.  Their best days may have been behind them, but they were there.  You could watch Universal monster movies on Friday late nights.  I wasn't really a monster kid.  My Uncle Doug had scared the bejeebus out of me with a life-size poster of Bela Lugosi as Dracula on his door in the basement of Grandpa and Grandma's house.  And it took me some time to get over it.  But at the same time I was pretty fascinated by the Universal monsters and particularly the make-up that led to them.  And I LOVED the Abbott and Costello Meet movies.  So...yeah. 

Which brings us to Basil Gogos.  I didn't buy Famous Monsters.  It was expensive.  But I would leaf through them before buying funnybooks and I'd linger over those old covers by Gogos.  Because they were things of beauty.  And as I got older I would look at that work as an important piece of pop culture.  So...the book.  It's really what you could want in an art book.  The art is the emphasis.  And while his monster work for Warren (and later similar work) is the cornerstone it also represents Gogos' work in the "Men's Magazines" of the time, his limited work on westerns (gorgeous) and a bit of his fine art work.  Throughout there are discussions by Gogos of his methods, the genesis of some of the work and a bit about the business of art at the time.  That information, straight from the artist's mouth, is extremely helpful.  And there is the occasional accolade from peers, including James Bama, whose work was incredibly important to me.  

Ultimately, it's clear that Gogos was one of the great illustrators of his time.  He just happened to come along after the Golden Age of Illustration, and his most important work were portraits of monsters.  And they were portraits.  Gogos was an amazing portrait artist.  And he was a master of color.  We were used to seeing these monsters in black & white.  That was their natural element.  But Gogos made them look like they had been in color all along.  The right color.  And it made them both more human and more inhuman in the portraiture.  

Not me. My philosophy on them is pretty much the same. The only art books I have (which is not many) were given to me as gifts.