Books read from various series

BASIL OF BAKER STREET by Eve Titus is the novel that inspired The Great Mouse Detective, with Basil and Dr. Dawson coming to the rescue when the child-napping Terrible Three try to force the mouse residents of 221B Baker Street out into the cold so they can take over the property for crime. Amusing, and I do like that Basil is an intentional Holmes imitator, living in 221 so that he can model himself on the master detective.

COUNT CROWLEY: Amateur Monster Hunter by Dave Dastmalchian and Lukas Ketner is V2 in the series. In the first TPB, protagonist Jeri got a gig as a midnight-movie host only to discover the gig also involves monster-slaying. Here she has to deal with a possibly friendly werewolf, a definitely hostile vampire, going to AA meetings and her predecessor’s stubborn resistance to mentoring a woman. Enjoyable, with more 1980s period references than the first book.

Mae, the Korean American protagonist of THE DARKEST NIGHT: Witch Queen #1 by AD Starrling kicks off her series facing the kind of power Harry Dresden didn’t encounter for a half-dozen books or more, making me wonder if the baseline for urban fantasy has shifted (much like comics where cosmic battles are almost routine). Like The Girl Who Sees it’s very heavy on exposition and for the same rationale — even though Mae is the Witch Queen destined to rule over the magical world, she knows nothing about magic so she needs to have it all explained to her. While I give Starrling credit for squeezing in a lot of action (way more than most such info-dumpy novels do), the exposition killed my interest. I did like the Korean aspects Starrling worked into the book though.

Dave Robinson’s Doc Savage pastiche, DOC VANDAL: Against the Eldest Flame gives the protagonist an origin that’s owes as much to Edmond Hamilton’s futuristic Doc Savage, Captain Future — Vandal was raised on a lunar base by an alien computer — and a colorful dieselpunk setting that includes airships, talking gorillas and Nazi zombies. In this kickoff adventure, Nazi gorillas kidnap Doc and his team, taking them not to Germany but to a lost city of dinosaur people where a living-flame being plans to take over Doc’s body to escape it’s current prison. This starts slow but picks up steam as it goes along, though it’s at best comparable to mid-level Doc Savage novel.

While many of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ tales take place in the same universe (The Moon Maid, the Carson of Venus series, Barsoom, Tarzan and Pellucidar, at a minimum), his only full-on crossover was TARZAN AT THE EARTH’S CORE. In a direct sequel to Tanar of Pellucidar, Burroughs’ friend Jason Gridley heads into Pellucidar via the polar opening in hopes of rescuing David Innes from the Korsars. Knowing Pellucidar is largely jungle, he logically recruits Tarzan to help navigate the landscape; however it turns out that in the perpetual sunlight of the inner Earth, even Tarzan can get lost, as does Jason himself. Can they survive, let alone reach David?

Watching the cast battle cave bears, lizard people and barbarians (not to mention a flying stegosaurus!) is lively fun, though Burroughs only gets back to the nominal mission at the end, and relies as he so often does on coincidence — digging out of a cave prison, Jason literally emerges under Tarzan’s feet, for instance.  Fun, even so, but the black cook’s Stepin Fetchit characterization and dialog is painfully racist (having the Noble Savages of the Waziri along doesn’t help). This walks back the ending of Pellucidar even more than the previous book, establishing Innes’ empire is a mere fraction of Pellucidar’s land surface. The ending, with one of Gridley’s team still missing, leads straight into the next book, Back to the Stone Age.

#SFWApro. Cover by Frank Frazetta; all rights to images remain with the current holders.