FRANKENSTEIN - DEAD AND ALIVE

FRANKENSTEIN – DEAD AND ALIVE
By Dean Koontz
Bantam Books
352 pages

Once again reviewing the last book in a series is often times a fruitless enterprise.
Then again, if you may have passed over this trilogy, allow me to point out the error of your ways with this brief encapsulation of what occurred in the first two books; FRANKENSTEIN - PRODIGAL SON and FRANKENSTEIN - CITY OF NIGHT.

Both Victor Frankenstein and the man he created from spare parts survived throughout the ages. The mad doctor, after centuries of working with other egomaniacs like Hitler and his kind, ends up in New Orleans as Victor Helios, a wealthy man with a reputation as a philanthropist. What no one is aware of is the fact that Helios has perfected the scientific process of cloning and is busy making what he calls the New Race. Built in cloning vats, they are faster, stronger and more durable than mere humans, the Old Race. Helios’ plan is the complete and utter annihilation of the Old Race, replacing it with his artificial people.

The only things standing in his way are two street savvy detectives, Michael Madison and his partner/lover, Carson O’Connor and Helios’ original creation, still alive and calling himself Deucalion. Over the centuries, Deucaulion has become a philosopher and realizes the true horror that is Victor Frankenstein. He has vowed to stop his creator and end his mad dream once and for all.

In the first two books, Decaulion and the two detectives began to unravel Helios’ master plan and learned that many of the city’s officials and law enforcement chiefs had been murdered and replaced by Helio’s cloned replicants. In this the third and final chapter, Decaulion sets out to infiltrate Helio’s clone factory and his ultra secret laboratories to destroy them. But to do so, he and his allies will have to face unimaginable horrors. At stake the very survival of mankind.

Spinning the old Mary Shelley classic on its head, Koontz has a grand time making the “monster” his noble hero and the scientist the immoral, heartless villain. He does this with amazing skill as it is one of the hallmarks of his fiction, inventing heartless, sadistic sociopaths who are worst than any monstrosity Hollywood could ever invent. Koontz understands that in a world of sinners and saints, we don’t need special effects to make monsters. Too many of them walk among us every day. FRANKENSTEIN – DEAD AND ALIVE may be a pulp an outlandish pulp nightmare, but its good versus evil theme is all too believable and scary as hell.

ARIEL

ARIEL
By Steven R. Boyett
Ace Fantasy
389 pages

I generally tend to shy away from most fantasy novels as they seem frivolous and lightweight. It’s like having a vegetarian meal of tofu and other assorted veggies, when what you are really craving is meat and potatoes. Steven R.Boyett’s ARIEL is clearly a meat and potatoes variety of a fantasy adventure. There is nothing fanciful in his apocalyptic setting wherein the world we know, the world of science and technology, one day simply ceases to function. Just like that, all the laws of science are no longer valid and replacing them is the magic of ancient mythology.

Then one day the protagonist, a young man named Peter Garey, encounters a unicorn in his travels through this lonely, silent landscape. The snow-white unicorn’s name is Ariel and she an immature creature seeking direction and guidance. She is intelligent and can talk, able to learn from Pete. Thus the two quickly come to learn they need each other if they are to survive in this wasteland aftermath of what Pete calls the Change. Underlying the entire narrative is the sexual tension created by the fact that Pete can touch Ariel and share a bond with her because he is still a virgin. Ariel is purity personified and only virgins can make contact with her; others are painfully burned.

And that’s the entire set up. What makes it unique and original is putting such a fantasy pairing into a gray, foreboding world. Along their journey, they meet a sword wielding philosopher named Malachi Lee who warns them that a necromancer has set up shop in the ruins of New York and should he learn of Ariel, will make every effort to capture her for the magical properties of her horn. No sooner is this warning given then they are set upon by agents of that evil magician and blood flows.

Boyett, himself a student of martial arts, describes violent encounters with a clinical precision that is based on his actual fight training. There are some glorious sword duels throughout and when Ariel is eventually captured by the villain, Pete and Malachi lead a rag-tag army of Washington based survivors in an attack on the necromancer’s stronghold, the Empire State Building. This is not your kid sister’s fantasy, but a fast paced, thrill ride that culminates in a page-turning battle amidst the cramped halls and offices of this iconic landmark.

ARIEL was Boyett’s first novel and was released way back in 1983. It launched his career and became a cult favorite amongst sci-fi and fantasy readers. The book wraps up on an open-ended line that indicated there would be more adventures to come. Now, after twenty-six, a sequel has been delivered in hardback called ELEGY BEACH occasioning the re-lease of this new paperback edition of ARIEL. I’m eager to get to it, as ARIEL is truly a remarkable, entertaining adventure book that doesn’t disappoint. If you’ve passed it over all these years, undecided whether to give it a go, hesitate no longer. ARIEL is simply a terrific book.

THE ROOK - Vol. Three

THE ROOK Vol. Three
By Barry Reese
Wild Cat Books
168 pages

He’s back, Atlanta’s own original pulp hero as created by Barry Reese, in another collection of six very exciting new adventures. The fun of Reese’s creation is how he is constantly pairing his beak-nosed avenger with classic pulp heroes from the golden days of the pulps. In this volume the Rook teams up with the Black Bat and criminologist Ascott Keane to take on the villainy of the red-garbed Dr.Satan.

Although the stories stand individually, they do form a narrative chain and in this volume the Rook takes on the growing threat of Hitler’s new super soldiers, each with his own unique scientifically altered abilities. But it is his confrontations with Dr.Satan that proved to me the most of fun this third outing. Reese clearly has fun with how he handles these old time baddies, giving each an obsessive drive to succeed in whatever their nefarious plans might be. They jump off the page and are truly part of the charm of his fiction.

There’s also plenty of action in the way of gun fights and knock-down, battering slug-fests between the minions of evil and the Rook and his own colorful allies. With this volume, Reese is three for three in the win column. His prose gets leaner and more confident with each new story he weaves, the sign of a real talent. Here’s hoping there are a lot more Rook adventures coming our way.

CROMWELL DIXON'S SKY-CYCLE

CROMWELL DIXON’S SKY CYCLE
By John Abbott Nez
P.G.Putnam’s Sons
Illustrated 31 pages

Since the Wright brothers first took to the air, the history of aviation in America has revolved around unique individuals. All of them possessed indomitable courage which gave them the impetus to reach for the clouds and the annals of flight are filled with their names and exploits from Amelia Earhart to Charles Lindbergh.

Recently all of us were duped by a balloon-boy hoax that was cooked up by a warped, celebrity craving couple from Colorado. No sooner was this story plastered all over the news, then I received this marvelous book about the “real” balloon boy, Cromwell Dixon.
It is a beautiful illustrated children’s book that relates how, in 1907, a fourteen year old Cromwell, in wanting to emulate his flying heroes, decided to build a flying bicycle and ride it in competition over the streets of Columbus, Ohio.

After a few setbacks, to include a disastrous fire that destroyed his first lighter-than-air balloon, Cromwell, with the loving support of his mother, finally triumphed. He actually affixed a modified bicycle to a giant balloon and flew it. So successful was he that eventually the newspapers tagged him, “America’s Boy Aeronaut.” Now, thanks to the extremely talented John Abbott Nez, who has over fifty children’s books to his credit, this long forgotten story of Cromwell Dixon is finally retold. There is even a photo of Cromwell and his mother in their garage in the book’s special epilogue.

Everything in this marvelous adventure book is true. If you’ve any young readers in your family eager to experience the early years of flight through the eyes of one of their own, you should pick up a copy of this book. It is truly inspiring.

BOILERPLATE

BOILERPLATE
History’s Mechanical Marvel
By Paul Guinan & Anina Bennett
Abrams Image
163 pages

Bogus documentaries have been a comedy stable of the film industry for many years now. In 1983, Woody Allen, using state of art the trick photography, invented a fictional biography of a fellow named Zelig; a living chameleon who was present at some of the major political events of the 20th Century. The film was so flawless in its special effects it helped coin a new word, mockumentary. Later Roger Zemeckis employed the same movie magic interweaving the life of the fictional Forrest Gump with real, historical personalities such as John F.Kennedy and John Lennon.

Now, thanks to the amazing work of graphic artists Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett, we have this wonderful oversized coffee-table book detailing the history of the most famous mechanical man ever created, Boilerplate. Through the use of archival pictures, we are shown the histories of inventor Archibald “Archie” Campion and his sister, Lily, at the end of the 19th Century. Both siblings are pioneers for social revolution and deeply affected by the constant scourge of warfare that continues to take thousands of lives throughout the world in various global conflicts. Thus, in 1893, Archie builds Boilerplate to be a robot soldier, his dream being that one day governments will adopt his philosophy, and employ only armies made up of mechanical warriors.

In the process of promoting his grandiose vision, Archie and Lily travel the world with Boilerplate and thus find themselves intimately involved with some of the most monumental events of the late 19th and early 20th Century. From charging up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, to saving the life of Mexican revolutionist, Pancho Villa and battling with Lawrence of Arabia against the Turks in World War One, Boilerplate and the Campions move through history in an amazing visual Odyssey beautiful detailed in hundreds of authentic (hmmm) black and white photos and colorful pictorial essays of the time.

The fun of this volume is captured on every beautiful laid out page and even though the entire conceit is adult make-believe, let me make one thing extremely clear, Guinan and Bennett have done their homework and the history they present framing their fanciful tale, is true and absolutely just as fascinating. You can read BOILERPLATE for the sheer audacity of its gimmickry, but will also come away with a vast knowledge of little known historical data that is nearly worth the price of the book itself. Now that’s a double treat for any real lover of history, bogus or not.

SENTINELS - The Shiva Advent

SENTINELS – The Shiva Advent
By Van Allen Plexico
White Rocket Books
238 pages

Van Allen Plexico seems determined to create a new sub-genre of adventure fiction I like to call tekno-pulp. The link between the roots of American pulps and comics books are so intertwined, it would take a Solomon to untangle them. At the height of their popularity in the late 20s and early 30s, hero pulps were the main course for imagination starved kids in this country. They feasted on tales the Shadow, Doc Savage and the Spider with unabashed relish, and then they grew up to create their own heroes; Sueprman, Batman, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, etc.etc. And thus as the pulps died out, at the end of World War II, the superhero comics easily stepped in and took their place in the hearts and minds of the new post-war generations.

Over the subsequent decades, many writers have made cursory attempts to bring the excitement and wonder of super-hero sagas into the prose field. Few have had limited success. Which is why this series by an avowed comic-book lover, is finally breaching that gap between the two formats and doing it brilliantly. Plexico, inspired completely by the Marvel and DC books he read as a child in the 70s, has invented his own super-hero team, the Sentinels, and they are clearly his homage to those comics. But with a truly wonderful difference in his understanding of prose and the potential it offers to dig deeper into the psyches of his spandex-wearing characters. His gift of storytelling is razor sharp and he captures the reader’s interest from the first chapter to the last, never allowing the action to flag once.

SENTINELS – The Shiva Advent is Plexico’s fourth book in this series, taking up where he left off with his first Warlord Trilogy. Resting on their laurels from having the saved the world in that first series of books, the Sentinels are attacked by an alien robot of unbelievable power and their leader, the mighty Ultraa, is kidnapped. Now it’s up to super scientist, Esro Brachis, the armor clad champion, to lead the team and not only rescue Ultraa, but learn the secret of their new foe. At the same time, Plexico begins to delve into Ultraa’s mysterious past as the layers of his amnesia slowly begin to peel away to reveal an amazing history filled with alien visitors to earth during the time of the American Revolution.

Using the classic pulp styling of weaving in and out of several plots, Plexico delivers a gripping adventure that is so much fun, I hated to see it come to end. But be forewarned, this is only the first of a trilogy and the climax is a mind-blowing cliff-hangar of gargantuan proportion, leaving the fate of the world in jeopardy. If you are one of those readers who enjoyed comics growing up and have since put them away because of some ill conceived idea that they are no longer relevant, here’s your answer in recapturing that old magic, but in a brand new, clearly sophisticated adult approach. This is pure tekno-pulp heaven!

THE NUCLEAR SUITCASE

THE NUCLEAR SUITCASE
By Joel Jenkins
PulpWork Press
303 pages.

The year is 1987 and the world is grappling with the economic collapse of the Soviet Union and end of Russian Communism . Fritz, Sly, Matthias, Mitz and Otto are the Gantlet brothers, a family rock group with a rather dramatic past. Born in East Germany, the five boldly escaped over the Berlin Wall to freedom years earlier. In the process, they acquired certain skills which, once relocated to the United States, they found commercially beneficial to their survival. To fund their music career, the brothers hire themselves out as bodyguard/security experts. This in turn leads to them into various adventures conducted in the shadowy alleyways of global espionage.

As this story beings, we learn that a disgruntled former KGB general is determined to see the Hammer & Sickle returned to its former glory. To achieve this end, he and his fanatical followers, hatch a plot to smuggle three nuclear bombs into the U.S. in small, harmless looking suitcases. It is only by chance that Sly and Fritz Gantlet discover the plot and are soon working hand in hand with the C.I.A. to find the three deadly containers and disarm them before the mad Russian can start World War III.

From the Agean Ocean to London, New York, Seattle and San Francisco’s Chinatown, the brothers find themselves propelled into a tense race against time, with only their wits and reckless courage to see them through. And as if three nuclear suitcases weren’t enough to deal with, a former German adversary turned mercenary appears with his own personal vendetta to settle against the brothers. And then there’s the beautiful female rock star who Sly finds himself enamored with. But is she one of the good guys or a double agent sent to destroy them?

Jenkins is a capable storyteller who is clearly having fun with this old fashion thriller. He has created a marvelous cast of characters unlike any others we’ve encountered in action fiction before and the sibling dynamics is a truly fresh approach to the genre. This is clearly modern pulp and worth your attention and support. Here’s hoping we haven’t seen the last of the Gantlet Brothers.