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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 7, 2023 10:29:07 GMT -5
 Metropolis by Philip Kerr So after 2 1/2 years I've reached the end of the line with Bernie Gunther. Due to the untimely death of Philip Kerr we won't be seeing any more of Bernie's acerbic wit and personality. And I'll miss him. Bernie goes out on a relatively high note. This is a very young Bernie Gunther. He has just been promoted to the Murder Commission by Bernhard Weiss. It's 1928, the waning days of the Weimar Republic. Nazis and Communists fight in the streets of the cities of Germany. And in Berlin a someone is killing and scalping prostitutes. It's not just into this case that Bernie is thrown though...because soon another killer is stalking the streets of Berlin, one who is shooting disabled Great War veterans and taunting the police in the newspapers. The title of the book is an allusion both to the setting, the metropolis of Berlin, but also to the time period. The screenwriter of the great German science fiction film Metropolis, Thea von Harbou, is a minor character in the novel. Von Harbou also wrote the screenplay for the movie "M," still one of the greatest suspense thrillers of all time, and the events of that film are shadowed in this book. As usual Kerr creates a great atmosphere and his research seems to always be spot-on. Here he presents a much younger and somewhat less cynical Bernie Gunther than we have become used to seeing. He's still learning his craft and he still has some hope that that Germany will not completely disintegrate. But as we know, the center cannot hold. And that makes it all the more tragic. |
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Post by Batflunkie on Jun 9, 2023 18:00:30 GMT -5
Michael Moorcock's The Final Programme
So I've had the Cornelius Quartet for a while, but struggled to get passed the first "Phase" (Ocean's 11 style heists aren't my bag baby). After that however, the book greatly opens up. The novel feels lived in, with a great sense of debauchery in the wake of the Kali Yuga. The ending however felt kind of thrown together compared to the rest, even if the entire book was kind of building up to it
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Post by berkley on Jun 9, 2023 19:58:22 GMT -5
Michael Moorcock's The Final Programme
So I've had the Cornelius Quartet for a while, but struggled to get passed the first "Phase" (Ocean's 11 style heists aren't my bag baby). After that however, the book greatly opens up. The novel feels lived in, with a great sense of debauchery in the wake of the Kali Yuga. The ending however felt kind of thrown together compared to the rest, even if the entire book was kind of building up to it
I liked The Final Programme but I think the other books of the Quartet are far superior - though also more challenging at times. From memory, I thought while reading that the heist section contained a bit of self-commentary, with some of the goings-on having parallels to other bits of Moorcock work, e.g. Elric, but I'd have to read it all over again now to see exactly what struck me that way.
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Post by Batflunkie on Jun 9, 2023 20:10:36 GMT -5
Michael Moorcock's The Final Programme
So I've had the Cornelius Quartet for a while, but struggled to get passed the first "Phase" (Ocean's 11 style heists aren't my bag baby). After that however, the book greatly opens up. The novel feels lived in, with a great sense of debauchery in the wake of the Kali Yuga. The ending however felt kind of thrown together compared to the rest, even if the entire book was kind of building up to it
I liked The Final Programme but I think the other books of the Quartet are far superior - though also more challenging at times. From memory, I thought while reading that the heist section contained a bit of self-commentary, with some of the goings-on having parallels to other bits of Moorcock work, e.g. Elric, but I'd have to read it all over again now to see exactly what struck me that way.
I did however greatly enjoy the prologue with Jerry and Professor Hira. I was also struck by the image that opens every book, I believe it was supposed to be Jerry and Ms. Brunner. If it was, it had a lot of significance considering the ending of The Final Programme |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jun 11, 2023 12:09:28 GMT -5
China to 1850 :a short history
Charles Hucker
This works decently as a vague overview of Chinese history, which is what I was looking for, but feels like it was written in 1958 based on the western slant of the author... there's no attempt here to be authentic, it's definitely an outsiders view.
Still. it places the Han/Three Kingdoms era in context better for me,which is what I was going for.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 13, 2023 16:49:00 GMT -5
I've been burning through books at a pretty rapid clip of late to the point I can't do individual reviews. So we shall have short synopses of the sort I used to do when I was super pressed for time.
Supreme Courtship by Christopher Buckley - Generally I find Buckley to be funny, but not overwhelmingly so. He's done a few things that I thought were outstanding (No Way to Treat a First Lady, Thank You for Smoking) but most of his stuff is just pretty okay. This was in the latter category. It probably doesn't help that it's now almost impossible to satirize Washington D.C. and American politics because they are so damn ridiculous. In this one a TV judge (but one that had actually been a state judge) is appointed to the Supreme Court. The first half of the book is quite good, but it absolutely does not stick the landing.
Spill the Jackpot by A. A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner) - This was the fourth Cool & Lam book. I read about half of these some time back and have now acquired the ones I haven't previously read. They do tend to formula. Cool & Lam are hired for a case. Donald gets his ass kicked. There's a murder that is usually pinned on Donald (Lam). Donald falls for (or appears to fall) at least one attractive young woman. The young woman (sometimes more than one) usually falls for Donald. The plot is Byzantine to the point of making Raymond Chandler think it's overly complicated. Donald figures it all out, sometimes with lawyer tricks to boot. The thing is that the formula and the writing are so damn compelling that I almost always lose sleep reading them. This was one of the better ones.
Jungle Tales of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs - Short tales of Tarzan as a boy growing up among the apes. I'm only a marginal Tarzan fan and I never thought this one was better than okay, but it's fine for what it is.
Classic Monsters Unleashed ed. James Aquilone - Short story anthology that I had seen Kickstarted last year. All the classic monsters are here (Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Wolfman, Jekyll & Hyde, etc.) in new stories that tend to subvert the tropes or add something new to the mix. Quality on something like this is always variable, but overall the stories tended to be quite strong with only one or two that I really didn't care for.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jun 15, 2023 14:25:03 GMT -5
American WarOmar El Akkad, 2017  This one is thematically very similar to two books I had read (and reviewed upthread) a few years ago, i.e., it’s a dystopian near-future story about the US falling apart into another civil war. The setting is the late 21st century, from 2075 to 2095, during a war in which the South (specifically South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas) once again secedes from the rest of the US in the aftermath of a law that entirely bans the use of all fossil fuels. Most of Texas immediately gets seized by newly powerful Mexico, while South Carolina falls victim to a bio-weapon unleashed by the US military, a type of highly infectious virus that makes all of the adults lethargic to the point of immobility, so that most of the state is cordoned off while the people waste away. The effects of climate change are all too real here, as Florida is completely submerged, as are big chunks of the coast everywhere, so that, say, Washington DC is also underwater and the new US capital is Columbus, OH. The main character is a girl/woman named Sara T. Chestnut (who insists on being called ‘Sarat’), and we follow her from age 6, when she and her family flee from fighting on the Mississippi River in Louisiana to a refugee camp on the Mississippi-Tennessee border, to her mid-20s. In that time, she becomes an operative and sniper for the Southern resistance while still a teen. That’s a pretty bare bones summary. This is a very well-written book, not without a few flaws, but still quite thought-provoking.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jun 15, 2023 21:58:50 GMT -5
Void Moon
Michael Connelly
Michael Connelly is a really good writer... I'm definitely a Harry Bosch fan, but apparently he's not so great at writing people on the other side.
This starts out as a caper book in the Parker mold, with alot of descriptions on exactly how they're going to rob the mark, and it's way convoluted for what is essentially a stick up.
Then when it goes really wrong the thief, Cassie Black, is supposed to be sympathized with and felt bad for, but I just didn't like her that much. I've never much be into relating to characters that are stuck in the past, and it's hard to cheer for someone who's plan involves kidnapping a pefectly happy year old girl.
The 'bad' guy has a really interesting story, but is just plain evil, which is unfortunate... I could have got behind him if he wasn't a stone cold killer.
It was certainly a page turner, but nothing on the level of the Bosch books.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2023 2:35:40 GMT -5
 There hadn't been any new Conan pastiche in quite some time until Titan Books released S.M. Stirling's Conan: Blood of the Serpent last year. This is a direct prequel to Red Nails and details Conan and Valeria's time together as mercenaries in Stygia and the spot of trouble with the Stygian nobility that happened that put them on the run at the beginning of Red Nails. It was pretty standard Conan pastiche-I haven't read a lot of the later Conan pastiche (the Robert Jordan. Steve Perry, etc. round of stuff I think published by Tor), but read a lot of the 70s and 80s stuff by de Camp, Carter, Anderson, Nyberg, Wagner et. al. when I was in high school and this seemed pretty standard fare in line with that stuff. It tried a little too hard in places, and felt padded in others (I still think Conan works best as a short story or novella rather than full length novel), but it was an enjoyable read. Nothing special, just middle of the road Conan pastiche. I'm not sure if its the first in a line of new pastiche (I know Heroic-formerly Conan Properties-has plans for more and the book publisher is Titan Books, the same folks doing the new Conan comics, so it's possible there's more in the works) or a one off to test the waters. It's only in hardcover now, and a bit pricey as a hardcover for what it is, but it would work as a les expensive paperback. The hardcover includes the original Red Nails after the novel concludes (novel is 300+ ish pages and Red Nails is the last 100+ pages of the book. One nice thing about this edition is that it has spot illustrations by Roberto de la Torre, the artist who is working on the new Conan comic from Titan. It's not a story that needed to be told, but it was a decent read, and I'd probably check out other entries if they were avaialble in my local public library as this one was. Not sure I'd plunk down the cash on a hardcover though. -M |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 16, 2023 10:11:32 GMT -5
 Super Black: American Pop Culture and Black Superheroes by Adilifu NamaI'm still kind of trying to decide how I feel about this book. Maybe because I'm not entirely convinced the book knew what it wanted to be. Or maybe it did and I just didn't quite parse it. It's certainly not a history of black superheroes...though it delves in to that area a bit. It's not really a critical assessment of those comics which featured or starred black superheroes...though it delves in to that area a bit. It does look at the rise of the black superhero and the evolution of some of them and the cultural reasons behind both their rise and that evolution. But it's not terribly broad when it does so. The prose is good. It's very readable...but it somehow seems kind of...slight. I don't feel bad about reading it...but I don't feel like I gained a much in the way of insight and very little in the way of knowledge (the latter may be because I've read literally hundreds of books and prozines on comics). I guess I'd say it was okay...and you probably won't feel bad about reading it. |
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Post by Calidore on Jun 16, 2023 12:00:13 GMT -5
I do wonder if Mr.Lucas read that book as a kid... those guys look awfully familiar... Perry Rhodan #25: Infinity Flight by Clark Darlton  We take a pause here from the 'snowman' plot to go on a little metaphysical journey. Apparently, Ace books decided we Americans only like 'space stuff', so they skipped what sounds like an awesome story about the Springers managing to start a robot revolutio on Earth... this is one of those days where I think I might need to learn German to actually read these! Anyway, this story has Perry being concerned that the Springers have found Earth and wanting a new 'peace through superior Firepower' weapon, so he goes back to the Wanderer (now called IT) and gets it. IN the process it takes a trip in between Galaxies to find the Barkons, who many or may not have seeded the Galaxy with intelligent life before their sun broke away from the Milky Way. Lots of Timey-Wimey stuff, but some fun pretend physics... and the god-like It takes the time to prank Reggie, because that's what you do if you're in a Perry Rhodan story. The 'shock shorts' here are 1/2 pages that were uncredited and could have been written by high schoolers.. but the continuation of Richard Vaughan's story is pretty good... the lands on the planet of his exile, finds a girl lab assistant stowed away, and they get to work fixing the planet they landed on, which of course will also save Earth from the doom he predicted. Nothing too out of the ordinary for classic sci fi, but a solid story.
FYI, the three skipped installments were eventually published by Ace paired with the first three episodes of the Atlan spinoff.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jun 17, 2023 15:43:42 GMT -5
Ablaze seemed to be hinted at some books too.. did those ever happen? I remember looking them up a couple years ago and it seemed the publisher was a bit more ambitious that they could.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jun 18, 2023 15:59:48 GMT -5
Perry Rhodan #27: Planet of the Gods by Kurt Mahr  This one picks up right where the last one left off, with Perry's X-men still stuck on the planet and hiding from the Spingers. Perry and the Stardust get close enough to send Pucky with some supplies.. and they succeed in doing some more damage. To be continued! Exile of the Sky I feel has kinda run out of steam a bit, I'm hoping it has a decent ending.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2023 23:24:50 GMT -5
 The Road by Cormac McCarthy I had picked this up a year or so ago to add to my TBR pile and meant to get to it sooner but never did. With McCarthy's recent passing, I bumped this to the top of my list. He was someone I had always meant to read, but never had. Well this was quite an experience. I can't say I am the biggest fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, but this is extremely well done for that genre and extremely well-written. The prose just flows, it feels easy but it packs such a gut-punch as well. I think I'd like to try something else from McCarthy, and I've requested Blood Meridian form the library, but I'm on a wait list, so it might be a bit. I'd seen a couple of films based on his stuff (at least Old Country for Old Men, maybe something else, not sure), but that in no way prepared me for experiencing McCarthy's actual prose. It felt sparse yet lush all at the same time. He's economical in his writing, but paints such vivid pictures (bleak as hell but vivid) with the words he uses. The ending was no surprise, but like the theme of the book, it was the journey itself getting there that was the experience. -M |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jun 22, 2023 2:23:37 GMT -5
The Road by Cormac McCarthy (...) Yeah, your own impressions pretty much echo my own about this one, especially the point about the sparseness of the prose that still somehow creates very rich, vivid imagery (that, as I recall, have a tendency to stick with you long after reading). Anyway, like I said in the other thread, Blood Meridian is definitely worth reading, but be prepared: the bleakness (and brutality) factor is ramped up to 11.
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