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Vintage and New Treasures: Oz’s Bag of Holding: John Sandford’s Prey Series; Stephen King’s Bill Hodges Trilogy

Vintage and New Treasures: Oz’s Bag of Holding: John Sandford’s Prey Series; Stephen King’s Bill Hodges Trilogy

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I have here a bag of holding. I am now going to pull some things out of it…

This past fall, since I do a lot of commuting to work and had become too depressed to follow my daily routine of news radio, I began listening to books on CD.

I’ve now digested 5 books in John Sandford’s popular Prey series (following detective Lucas Davenport), read by Richard Ferrone, and the first two of Stephen King’s Bill Hodges trilogy (following retired detective Bill Hodges and his friends Jerome Robinson and Holly Gibney), read by Will Patton.

Sandford, a retired Minneapolis journalist, began writing the Prey books back in the ‘80s. The series now has 27 installments, with an additional 13 spin-off books! Looks like I’ll be spending time with Lucas Davenport in my minivan for a long time to come.

Having brought these out of the bag, I’d like to discuss two specific areas of appeal of a series like Prey. First is place. Second is chronological progression (following characters as they age). Then I have an afterthought about genre “classification.” I’ll also  address “audio” vs. “printed page.” And I’ll have a few things to say about King’s foray into hardboiled detective fiction along the way.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes – A New Solar Pons Omnibus

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes – A New Solar Pons Omnibus

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Copper_OmnibusIf you want to read my thoughts on the season four (and hopefully series) finale of BBC’s Sherlock, click on over and read it at my blog. Because today The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes is going to talk about Solar Pons.

August Derleth, the creator of Solar Pons, passed away in 1971. Derleth’s final collection, The Chronicles of Solar Pons, a mix of previously released stories and ones never published, came out in 1973. Surprisingly, Pons would be back within a decade! In 1979, Basil Copper would release three collections of tales: The Dossier of Solar Pons, The Further Adventures of Solar Pons and The Secret Files of Solar Pons. There would be three more collections, as well as a novella. Copper had written horror books for Derleth’s Arkham House imprint and he seemed like a good choice for continuing the stories.

Unfortunately, Copper’s Pons connection did not have a happy ending. He helped Arkham House editor Don Turner compile an omnibus edition of all of Derleth’s released Pons stories. However, Copper chose to do some ‘corrective editing’ of the originals, which caused a furor among the Pontine faithful. You can read Jon Lellenberg’s essay on this topic in The Solar Pons Gazette (page 45). Peter Ruber also wrote an excellent account, but I don’t have permission to reprint that.

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Modular: Oz’s Bag of Holding: Breaking Out Basic D&D for the Next Generation

Modular: Oz’s Bag of Holding: Breaking Out Basic D&D for the Next Generation

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D&D_Basic_Rules_1981I have here a bag of holding. I am going to pull some things out of it now…

Well, I’ve gone and done it. I’ve broken open the floodgates and moved my children on from Dungeon! The Board Game to the real deal.

This is fortuitous timing, as M Harold Page has launched a new series of posts (READ HERE) on Black Gate about introducing kids to tabletop role playing (which I have been reading with newly-relevant interest).

My daughter and son will soon be turning 8 and 6 respectively. Bringing the son in on things might have been a bit premature — he’s more apt to grab the miniatures and fight with them like action figures than to sit and patiently listen to a Dungeon Master try to paint a scenario in his mind’s eye.

To introduce these acolytes, I dug out my 1981 D&D Basic set (1981 edition). After decades of d20, revisiting this chestnut three decades later is kinda hilarious. D20 is so elegantly simple in concept: Hit a monster with AC 18? Roll a d20, add modifiers, and get an 18 or better. But with old-school D&D, no! You look at the monster’s AC and then have to consult a chart (I confess I’d forgotten what THAC0 even stood for). Cross-reference monster’s AC with character’s level to see what you have to roll. Basic? No, not really. Pretty damn cumbersome!

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Jack Kirby’s Fourth World: 45 Years Later

Jack Kirby’s Fourth World: 45 Years Later

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I’ve been discussing comic books with a friend of mine who moved to Ottawa. Based on a stray comment of his, I committed to tracking down and reading Jack Kirby’s 4th World comics.

I obviously know about Darkseid and the New Gods, but from later works at DC, like the classic Great Darkness Saga in The Legion of Super-Heroes (check it out!).

And I’d read lots of 1960s Marvel Kirby as well as Machine Man and The Eternals at Marvel in the 1970s (I even blogged about The Eternals here).

Kirby was *huge* in the 1960s, having been a major creator of the current Marvel Universe. But by 1970, he was looking for a change and DC signed him to a 5-year exclusive deal.

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Retrofitting, And When It Doesn’t Work

Retrofitting, And When It Doesn’t Work

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starwarsI don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m married to a builder. Over the years I’ve observed (judging by the level of bitching) that it’s easier to start from scratch than it is to retrofit. Still, there’s a way to do it well, and a way to screw it up.

I think that’s true of writing as well. I’ve already talked about sequels, and how genre writers in particular have to be careful to remember the details of the worlds they’ve created previously. However, when an author who’s twenty years into a series gets the colour of someone’s eyes wrong, or forgets that they’ve once said their protagonist was an only child, you have to figure that’s an honest mistake, and cut the writer some slack.

But what about conscious, deliberate changes? I’m not talking about reboots, or spin offs. They have their own problems. And I’m not talking about the changes that naturally occur when you’re adapting one media to another. No, I’m talking about sequels where the writer/creator seems to think that no one will remember what’s already been established. You know, where the writer/creator says “Oh yeah, I know I said she was an only child, but now I need her to have a brother, so she does.”

Yes, I’m talking to you, George Lucas.

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The Killingest Book I Know: The Twelve Children of Paris by Tim Willocks

The Killingest Book I Know: The Twelve Children of Paris by Tim Willocks

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“It is night and the night has no end.”

Matthias Tannhauser

I have read all sorts of hyper-violent books: thrillers; crime; horror; even some fantasy. Nothing, and I mean absolutely, utterly nothing, comes close to Tim Willocks’ The Twelve Children of Paris (2014). Seven years after his adventures during the Great Siege of Malta chronicled in The Religion (and reviewed here), Matthias Tannhauser, ex-Janissary and current Knight of St. John, comes to Paris in search of his wife, Carla. It is August 23rd, 1572, just hours before the start of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

The massacre was the result of the tremendous instability the Reformation had caused to France. During the ten years preceding the massacre, France had fought the first three of the Wars of Religion. Primarily a struggle between two noble houses, the Calvinist House of Conde and the devoutly Catholic House of Guise, the kings strove to maintain a balance between them and avoid bloodshed. When it seemed the Protestants had gained too much power and threatened that of King Charles IX, he authorized twenty-four hours of killing. The plan was to eliminate the leaders of the Protestant cause, many of whom had come to Paris for the wedding of Charles’ sister, Margaret, to the Protestant Henry of Navarre. Not counted on was the terrible enmity the strongly Catholic Parisians held for the Protestants. Instead of a day, the carnage lasted for several days and spread out into the countryside. Estimates vary from five to thirty thousand dead.

Into this brewing hellstorm Matthias Tannhauser rides. Carla, noblewoman and renowned player of the viol da gamba, has been summoned to play at a concert for the royal wedding. Though eight months pregnant, she couldn’t bring herself to refuse a royal summons. Tannhauser, away on business in North Africa, has returned to France and ridden to Paris to join his wife. Upon hearing of an assassination attempt on Protestant leader Admiral de Coligny and the consequent cancellation of the musical performance, Tannhauser decides he must find his wife and remove her from a city on the brink of civil collapse. Unfortunately, he has only the slightest idea of where she might be.

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HELP! Author’s House Robbed

HELP! Author’s House Robbed

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Friday the 13th didn’t do so well for indie author and helluva-nice-dude, Zig Zag Claybourne, also known as Clarence Young. Why, you ask? Because Zig Zag Claybourne’s house got robbed.

zig zag claybourne

Claybourne doesn’t deserve this crap. No one does. So why not help a fantastic writer out?

How can you help?

You can buy one of his books. My favorite is The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan. If you’re a fan of Buckaroo Banzai or The Hitchhiker’s Guide, you should read it. Now is the perfect time to buy it — or any of his fine books. (CLICK TO BUY!)

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Let’s Talk About The Dying Detective

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Let’s Talk About The Dying Detective

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Dying_ConreyLast week I wrote about the season four opener of BBC’s Sherlock, which was an improvement on season three and the abysmal Abominable Bride. But the second episode was yet another huge disappointment, so I’m not going to bother with a negative post about it. However, I’m going to talk about the Canonical story it was based on.

It’s no huge surprise that The Lying Detective was based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s tale, “The Dying Detective.” As far as that goes, The Lying Detective was actually a decent adaptation of the original story. That’s damning with faint praise, however, as I consider “The Dying Detective” to be one of the weakest stories in the Canon.

Appearing in December of 1913, it was the forty-sixth Holmes story to be published. It was one of just eight stories included in His Last Bow.

THE STORY

SPOILERS – I’m going to talk about a story that’s been out there for over one hundred years. And it features the most popular fictional character of all time. If you REALLY don’t want to be tipped off, jump over here and spend fifteen minutes reading it. You have been warned!

Holmes starves himself, looks ghastly, lays in bed, insults Watson, the villain comes over, helpfully confesses, is arrested and Holmes reveals that the was faking it. Yep, that’s the whole thing. Holmes lies in bed for all but a few seconds of the story (he jumps up to lock Watson in the room). No deducing, no finding clues, no nothing. His work in trying to pin a murder on Culverton Smith all happens beforehand.

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Modular: Three Viking Age Supplements and One Role-Playing Game

Modular: Three Viking Age Supplements and One Role-Playing Game

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GURPSVikingsWhen I first discovered the Yggdrasill roleplaying game, I had the understanding that that Vikings-specific system existed in near-isolation. Oh how wrong I was! As I have purchased, downloaded and read Norse-themed rpg materials from DriveThruRPG and other sites, I have discovered that interest in the Northern ethos has been quite lively for some time. When, either out of mere curiosity or out of design to add to my home game, I first thought to collect Viking Age supplements, my mind naturally went to I.C.E.’s Vikings supplement for both Rolemaster and the Hero System: this was because, in my coming-of-age in the late 80s/early 90s, I was an ardent GM of MERP (Middle-Earth Role Playing, a scaled-down version of the Rolemaster rules set) and passionate about the Hero System in the form of Champions, a super-hero roleplaying game. But in those years, a young gamer with limited funds, I never could justify a pragmatic purpose for purchasing the I.C.E. Vikings supplement.

That situation has changed, now that I’m older and I have extra cash, but I still don’t have that I.C.E. supplement. The reason? Because it’s out of print and only available in hard copy via third party purveyors. The process of obtaining this seems like needless trouble when there are so many instant-gratification products available as immediate PDF downloads.

Today I will be reviewing, in the order in which I discovered and read them, three of these: GURPS Vikings, Troll Lord Games’s Codex Nordica, and Vikings of Legend for the Legend RPG System. All three of these seek to evoke a Viking Age roleplaying experience while using an existing rules set, the second type that I outline in my last post. I’ll say at the outset, though, that Codex Nordica read a lot like Vidar Solaas’s Vikings RPG, and I’m certain this is because of the similarity of the two systems that were being adapted for the Viking Age feel. Both Solaas’s D20 system and Brian N. Young’s Castles and Crusades engine have their foundations in Dungeons & Dragons, which has enjoyed so many iterations now that most of them aren’t even called Dungeons & Dragons anymore. Last post I allowed Solaas the distinction of having created an “original” Old Norse game, since he had to “hack” the D20 system so much. I’m tempted to award Young this same distinction, since in my view he visibly wrestled with many of the inflexibilities that I perceive in D&D games. But ultimately it belongs in the rpg supplement group; the following observation shares only one reason for this designation.

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The Top Ten Books I Read in 2016

The Top Ten Books I Read in 2016

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Black Science Volume 1-small Monstrous Little Voices-small The City of Mirrors Justin Cronin-small

To finally shift from 2016, below are the ten books that I most enjoyed reading this past year (in alphabetical order, since selecting a top ten was tough enough). As I’ve mentioned in previous reviews, I’m a fan of great character work, vivid worlds and intense action, as opposed to quiet literary stories (though those can be good, too). If you’re into those things, as well, hopefully these recommendations will appeal to you. Note that not all of these novels were released in 2016; I just happened to read them this year (don’t judge me, there’s a lot of stuff out there).

I also wanted to say thanks to everyone who has been reading my reviews and commenting on them. Hopefully you’re enjoying them so far, and I’m excited to keep contributing here in 2017. Feel free to drop me a line below with your thoughts on my Top Ten, or recommendations for similar books I should check out.

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