I’m reading too many of these, and they are too similar, for much in the way of in depth reviews. So I think if you are interested at all, you’ve got the premise settled in your head by now, and I can just go with sense impressions, unless something vital changes. So, here’s what’s going on in Ice and Fire.

1) More secrets from the past, via cryogenic chambers! That is definitely a cool thing, not simply for the information they have been able to glean that will help them on their way, but also because where there is one bank of cryogenically frozen people from the past, there will be more. Y’know?
2) More ambivalence about the purpose of their travels. I guess the real purpose is to eventually teleport into a place where they like what they find and want to stay there forever and grow old and fat together with lots of slightly mutated children, but I think even though that’s what they believe, they none of them would be willing to put down roots when there are more things to see and people to save. Yet at the same time, they spent the whole book seeing a big, obvious problem (otherwise happy, wealthy people living one of the better lives available in our tragic future, except the massive mutant snake-worshiping cult that has sprung up is threatening to turn them all into hate-filled religious slaves) and saying in a number of different ways, “Hey, this is not our problem, we don’t have to solve everything, we’ll just get chilled if we do”. Right up until they end, when they remembered that they’re suppose to leave the campsites cleaner than they found them. I want this ambivalence and, okay, flip-flopping to be a psychologically interesting long term problem, but the truth is that it’s probably just iffy writing. Still, I hold out hope!
3) Romance is in the air! By which I mean the guy who likes guns is awkward around the baron’s secretary and also the blonde girl that’s been associated with Doc Tanner gets tired of him being old and her vagina starts making questionable decisions for her. The second part was the worst thing in the series so far, because even though their relationship troubles have been in evidence around the edges of the previous book or two, she suddenly becomes completely unreliable out of nowhere in this book, and then is clumsily removed from the plot. It all felt very “teenager in an ’80s horror movie”, when the rest of the series has not shown any evidence of slut-shaming or indeed imbalance between the sexes on either the good or evil sides of the equation.
4) Gradual cast turnover continues as well, which I still like, even if I could stand for it to not be, y’now, clumsy like this was.

By and large: there’s still more good than bad here, even if I wasn’t so susceptible to the setting that I’d ignore the bad for as long as possible. The edges are fraying a little bit, but I see all kinds of ways to recover, so for now I’ll hold out hope that my trashy apocalypse-porn series can stay less trashy than one might expect.

Camping now means “another Deathlands book”, since they’re already old and don’t need to be kept very well plus also it’s not like I’m going to run out of them anytime soon. Of course, I only managed to read a tiny portion of the book while camping, because I had very little luck concentrating on any book until the last full day. And then it took me like a year to read it afterward, but that’s because I’ve been busy with too many hours of work (and lots of comics to read while there) and too many hours of TV that I fell behind on while camping, so, y’know. It’s just weird ’cause these read so easy.

You know what else is weird? Dectra Chain does not refer to anything actually in the book, and even Wikipedia Pete knows almost nothing about the word. It appears to have to do with navigation? Which, okay, is fair enough, since the book is about a post-nuke whaling village in Maine. It’s not clear to me where they got their boats or the know-how to maintain them, but I guess it’s been a hundred years, people adapt and all. If you’re anything like me, a whaling village doesn’t sound like it has the kind of serious threat that Ryan Cawdor’s band of teleporting rovers needs to take care of, except perhaps from the whale’s perspective. But sure enough, there’s a bloodthirsty captain who holds the town in a strange thrall and who our heroes naturally manage to run afoul, after which violence ensues, as it is wont to do.

But what’s interesting to me is not this so much as the fact that our good guys are still kind of assholes at times. Notably, they both ran across some French Canadian hunters[1] and chased them off and stole their food and weapons instead of just leaving them be, and then later very nearly left town without Righting the Wrong. I like to think the subsequent difficulties were karmic retribution, but I suppose I’ll instead have to get used to the idea that they’re merely the best of a bad world, and not always good in a bad world instead. However else I may feel about it, that at least has the virtue of being suitably apocalyptic.

In other, unrelated news, there may be more people teleporting around! And also a secret, more highly classified teleporter that leads to a secret moonbase? Whether these facts are related or will ever become the focus of an episode remains to be seen.

[1] Well, that’s what I assumed, all it said was that they couldn’t speak English.

I am kind of relieved to see some errors cropping into the Deathlands series. It’s not that they’re great literature; they are little more than fun sci-fi romps that would make a great 80s TV show[1], but in a way, that’s kind of my point. They have no business being as forward thinking and well-constructed as they are, considering their genre and their publication era alike. So it’s nice to see Pony Soldiers come along and suddenly provide a recurring villain as well as letting the characters act uncharacteristically foolish toward him now that he’s finally on the scene. Of course, then I think, no wait, they don’t know here in book five that the series is going to get into triple digits and still have new books coming out even as I castigate them for that lack of foresight, and most of those same 80s TV shows waited less than a year between recurring villains, which is about the length of time between the first and fifth books being published, so really this probably isn’t an error after all. Dammit. Fine, but I’m holding on to the part about them acting foolishly around him, instead of him just being so clever as to avoid his fate. At least it’s something?

In addition to all that, the story delves a little bit more into the concept of time travel that has been looming over everyone’s heads, by virtue of apparently dropping General Custer in the middle of a pitched war with the post-nuke Apache somewhere in the mostly radiation-free Southwestern deserts. Between that little mystery, viewpoints from a few more characters than we’ve had before, and ever-greyer moral quandaries, the series is definitely getting more interesting the further along it goes. And that’s not just my relief over the misstep talking.

[1]  Think A-Team, except with more continuity than they ever could have dreamed of in those days. And more female characters outside refrigerators than they ever could have dreamed of, for that matter.

The problem with the Deathlands series, which will only grow in scope as I get further into it, is that the formula is already starting to preclude my ability to say anything new. This is not a problem with me reading them, by any means; what most people get in comfort out of re-reading favored books, I’m getting out of these. I’m only five in now, and there are almost certainly over a hundred, with new ones still being published every two or three months right now, but Homeward Bound doesn’t deviate from the formula established by the end of the third book, not a bit. The band of adventurers pops of out a teleportation room sealed up inside an undiscovered government hideaway, emerges into the post-nuclear landscape, runs off to do some good deeds, and then heads back for another teleport.

Sure, this book added a brief trip to an apparent moonbase (which, okay, that was pretty cool, but I wonder if it will turn out to have been flavor text rather than a hint at future adventures) and let the main character, Ryan Cawdor, come face to face with his past[1], but they couldn’t even leave me with the vague hint of doubt as to whether he would try to stick around and rule his ancestral barony instead of running right back to adventuring.[2] Nope, the last two pages are, “Let’s all pile in our car and drive back to the teleport room!” I’m only asking for that to be replaced by maybe 10 or 20 pages at the beginning of the next book, right? Still, better to know what I’m in for now than later, I guess? Enh, “in for”, I say, when the only real problem is the reviews. The books themselves I will continue eating like candy long past the point where my brain is fat and complacent.

I am amused at the contrast between this and Anita Blake, where I’m only tolerating the books for the reviews. If it weren’t for GRRM, that is what I’d have read next! Instead, the next while will be recap city. Sorry about that.

[1] The wrong being righted by Sam Beckett in this episode of Quantum Leap is that of the Cawdor family’s destruction by black sheep middle brother Harvey.
[2] Oh, and to clarify two points, 1) Obviously the title of baron didn’t come to be until, y’know, after the nuclear war. In many senses, his father was exactly the sort of power-grubbing man that the survivors of the Trader’s old crew keep coming up against in each “new” book. Oh, and 2) I just said the series lasts for like a hundred books, so no pretending that the party’s survival and success count as spoilers. (Like you were gonna read them anyway!)