Tag Archives: men’s adventure

The Mars Arena

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I think the hardest part about seeing Laurence James fall off of the Deathlands series is that the books are no longer reliably sci-fi genred. In The Mars Arena, for example, the book starts days after they last teleported from / to anywhere[1], on the run from a local gang who vastly outnumbers them, and ends with no redoubts or mat trans units anywhere in sight.

After a subplot with a scientific community in Montana come to see a falling satellite goes nowhere[2], our intrepid heroes are kidnapped into a Hunger Games style tournament in Las Vegas, as proxies for a bunch of west coast barons[3] who are in competition to see who’s in charge for the next year. As, unexpectedly, is someone near and dear yet recently absent from their group. Not, of course, on the same team though. That’d be way too easy.

The thing is, the propulsive plotting, side characters, constant air of betrayal, scary mutant monsters? All of that is still present, and still works well. But these new authors have lost a lot of the thread of the characters, such that they’re sort of becoming one note caricatures[4]. I still don’t have the data to really know much, but I’m guessing different authors have a better grasp on some of the threads than others? For sure, nobody has the whole picture except the original guy, and he died 26 years ago. Well, or maybe me. But I’m not sure what I can do about it at this remove, you know?

[1] Like, I don’t even remember how the last one ended. Were they likely to teleport anytime soon? The tightly connected narrative between each book is the thing I miss third most, though I suppose this is directly related to how a lot of different people are writing these in a random order instead of one person all in a row. Obviously you could make sure of the continuity, but who wants to waste their time on a low rent men’s adventure series? (Clearly not the people at Gold Eagle who had no idea what makes this series great.)
[2] Yet? I wish I had faith on that point.
[3] Perhaps a precursor to how things are in the Outlanders series? As I said, I’ll be watching for these little connections.
[4] The characterizations of the main people[5] being consistent is what I miss second-most about the series. Well, that and the underlying feminist egalitarianism among the group. That part is gone less often than consistent characterization, but I think in a very real way the failure points are coming from the same place. Wrong character actions are how you lose that kind of thing.
[5] So far, still JB Dix and Doc are hardest hit. Jak was always sort of one note in the first place, at least before and after his family stuff happened, Mildred has done okay for whatever reason, and Ryan and Kristy as the two mainest characters have of course been treated best by the continuity fairies. But still not always perfect.

Exile to Hell

I have reached the point in the Deathlands series where it has become two series. Which is weird. Now, if I understand the release schedule correctly, I’ll be alternating between the two series. It is very clear that Outlanders is in conversation with the original, but less clear if it will be a two way conversation. We’ll see, I guess!

Exile to Hell is set another hundred years in the future. That is to say, two hundred years after World War III all but wiped out humanity and gave rise to monstrous mutations both within and outside of humanity. And one hundred years after Ryan Cawdor, Mildred Wyeth, and friends have been striding the so-called Deathlands that are what remained of the United States.

So, what’s different? A lot of things, as it happens. Most importantly, the mostly horrible Barons who run the mostly horrible various settlements have come together and consolidated their power[1]. They have nine much larger fiefdoms in which all of the healthy, happy, neatly contained and regimented and let’s be honest controlled people live, while everything outside the barons’ control is known as the Outlands. Yes, another hundred years means that much less radiation and associated horrors, but it’s still not great out there, Bob.

Also, our characters are pretty different. Okay, is there a main character, his military buddy, a redhead, an old dude straight out of the past, and an albino? When you put it like that, you’re undercutting my point, fine. But my point is, the main character? He’s one of his baron’s secmen, now called magistrates. They have the tech and the firepower to be nearly invulnerable. We’re talking hardcore body armor, the best guns[2], black freaking helicopters. You go up against them? You lose. Kane really could not be more different from Cawdor, viewed through the lens of the latter’s adventures so far. And Krysty Wroth’s ginger mutant has been replaced by Brigid Baptiste’s ginger historian who Knows Too Much(tm). (The other characters, it’s too soon to tell yet.)

But the biggest difference is the environment. This is not (yet at least) a survivalist series. Civilization has begun to return. The redoubts full of teleporters are still a feature of the series, but it turns out they’re the tip of the iceberg. The old questions were “where are we going next using this tech we barely understand, and who will we have to kill to save people and then get back to the mysterious tech and jump to the next place?” The new questions are “where did this technology come from, really, and once we know the answer, are we content to live with it? Or should Something be Done?”

So, as I said, I’m really interested in seeing whether the Deathlands are in conversation with this series, and what secrets each will reveal going forward.

[1] Does this make future Deathlands volumes feel a little less hopeful than they had up to now? Prospectively, it does. All the work they’ve been doing to free people and wash away the human horrors, and, a generation or so later, it was for nothing? Yikes.
[2] I mean, obviously. Whatever else these books are, they’re still in the genre that glories in describing gun models, ammo types, and what that ammunition does to a body.

Demons of Eden

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I know I was just complaining about how these Deathlands books are just extruding titles now, but maybe someone else thought the same thing lo these 27 years ago? Because Demons of Eden is basically on the nose. I could wish the editors were better about paying attention to character continuity now that there are multiple authors, or for that matter about scene continuity within a single volume.

And I could especially wish the books had not suddenly remembered their genre and started turning all male gazey. 38 books in, plus owning all of them, I’m not likely to stop now. But I miss being able to recommend them with almost no reservations[1], back when they were subverting the expectations of their audience instead of pandering to it, and back when there was a little more science in my speculative fiction.

But my original point was that at least the plotting is a bit more interesting and on track and acting like it and the title are related, which is not nothing. This time, our heroes tackle ancient Sioux and conquistador legends about lost cities of gold, which might also hold the key to undoing a century of nuclear damage to the entire planet. But if the only way to reach that end is to despoil one of the last idyllic locales in the post-holocaust world, is it worth it?

In conclusion, ley lines and Gaia and leaning more into earth-based fantasy plotting is all well and good, but I miss when the characters were jumping into government funded teleporters all the time.

[1] Way too detailed about guns in use, which is its own kind of uncomfortable in these fallen times, and some pretty explicit violence on the regular. But otherwise? A+, for a long run of books.

Skydark

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I have a feeling that, with the loss of the original author, there’s at least a decent chance I have something like eighty Deathlands books left to read that all have randomly extruded titles. The somewhat better news is that the new author[1] has a better handle on the characters than in the last book.

Skydark does raise a logistical problem as the series gets ever longer. There are only so many years and so much geography in the continental (former) United States, for Ryan Cawdor to have history everywhere they go. Unless we are operating on Marvel time, it’s already straining credulity. Apparent solutions are a) talk about the pasts of the other characters from this time and place or b) continue on with recycled enemies and NPCs occasionally or c) you know, go somewhere and the characters don’t have a history there. And to be fair, b and c already happen with some regularity. Which leaves me sad about the broad absence of a.

This time out, anyway, the band of violent wrong-righters encounters a mutant who for once got himself a fairly beneficial mutation, as a result of which he leads an army of the most terrifying of all human mutations, the stickies, in numbers never before seen. The story is fine[2], but the science part of the science fiction went a bit off the rails, and you can tell that the last two chapters were reserved for the editor fixing some of the logistical and characterization continuity errors that this author introduced into the series.

Which was a relief, as I came into the final stretch of the book prepared to be pretty scathing and concerned about how many of these books I own. But now I think we’ll be back on the rails soon. I approve of gradually more epic plots, as long as the characters and the rules don’t change drastically. It’s a little late in the game for that, is all.

Last thing: I want to give a shoutout to the meaningless blurb phrases on each cover. Like, they’re always the most enigmatic version of a fortune cookie, but this one is just special. “When all is lost, there is always the future.”

I’d say you can’t write this stuff, but objectively, someone could.

[1] Or another, newer author? Ugh. I don’t think I’m going to look it up every single time.
[2] my complaints about Ryan’s overstuffed past notwithstanding

Bitter Fruit

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Eventually, I liked the plot for Bitter Fruit. Cryogenically frozen bioterrorists first rebuild the Celtic empire[1] and then plot to wipe out most of the already dregs of humanity that yet remain, a hundred years past the nuclear holocaust that already basically marked the end of the world. Luckily, we know who can probably stop them! (Oh, this is a Deathlands book, if you didn’t actually know yet who could stop them.)

I say “eventually”. While this was not the first book in the series to have a new author, it was the first book where I noticed. Characters subtly out of character[2], a big change in the way book transitions work[3], and most damning, a possible change in the gender egalitarianism of the series. I’m reserving judgment on that last bit, as one data point is not a trendline, but all the same, none of the female characters have ever used sexuality to extricate themselves from danger before this author, so. (The main male character has at times tolerated sex while in danger, which I suppose is technically rape, and also I do not object to using sex as a tool in the toolbox when required. I’m just leery of it from a first time to the series author, after having spoken so much about the quality of the books to date.)

Worst news: this new author will be popping up frequently for a little while. Man I hope someone smacks him around and sets him straight.

[1] Well obviously empire is not the right word here. People isn’t what I want though, and kingdom is nearly as wrong as empire is, albeit a little less inadvertently snide.
[2] Just because you call a dude laconic, if he talks all the time and in much more detail than he used to, I’m both going to notice that and also judge you for not having known what laconic meant in the first place, nameless (unless I went to wikipedia and checked again) Deathlands farm writer!
[3] Instead of “end a book, pick up the next book immediately where the prior book just ended”, this was “end a book, skip forward by about three chapters of what I would have expected to read, but those three chapters wouldn’t make any sense at all if they’d been written, which I guess is why they had to be skipped, but since I noticed, you didn’t actually accomplish much.”

Stoneface

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What do you say after 34 books in the same series?

I guess the first thing I’ll say is that I like how they’ve added some new villains and secondary characters that will maybe pop up again in the future, because it’s important not to get bogged down and run out of new ideas. (Plus, one of them has cool mutant powers like the main lady character, Krysty Wroth, and it’s nice to have positive mutations as more often than a one-off, since they sure don’t skimp on the negative mutations. Thermonuclear radioactivity, what are you gonna do? shrug emoji)

The second thing I’ll say is that even though it’s arguably lazy to set a book a hundred years in the future and then rely on the present as grist for your novel mill, I really do like when we get bigger glimpses into the way the world was when it ended, and this is a big one indeed. What would you say to a mountain full of pre-nuke government officials who have been keeping themselves alive with cryogenics and constant organ transplants? I, for one, can dig it. …and then there’s a suspiciously familiar cult, too. It’s an embarrassment of 20th Century riches, is what.

The third thing I’ll say is I have a disappointment, particularly because of how often I’ve been surprised by progressive egalitarianism throughout the series. When you call your book Stoneface, and it is partially set in and around Mount Rushmore, with characters[1] from the indigenous Lakota people, well, I was really hoping they would bring up the Six Grandfathers at all. But that’s a lot to ask of 1996’s authors, you know? In a lesser men’s adventure series, which let’s be honest is basically all of them on the “how progressive can this genre be?” scale, it would never have crossed my mind to be disappointed here.

Counterpoint, though, I really like to hope I would not have read 34 books deep into such an alternative series. Despite what it looks like, I do have standards.

[1] one of them even a potential recurring person from my prior mention

Eclipse at Noon

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A thing you would have no real reason to remember: Circle Thrice[1] ended on a cliffhanger. (Also, I read that a year ago?? I do not read enough. This is not the first time I’ve said this lately, but.) So anyway, though, cliffhanger.

That aside, Eclipse at Noon is mostly about old enemies and new riverboat rides. I’ve never been on a riverboat, but it mostly sounded like what I expected cruise ships to be like, except for the paddle and all. Also: smaller than that. This continues to make me wonder if cruise ships were just a lot fancier in the ’80s and ’90s versus how they are now, which is sort of middle class chic, for some reason.

Anyway: the story was approximately what I’ve come to expect, with guns and mutants and the promise of more teleporting around (although not any just lately). Also, some random old enemies that we’ve never heard of before, but as good a job as this series does of recycling old encounters into new ones, I cannot fault them for once in a while saying, look, guys, remember this stuff that happened to us before the series started?

The title thing, though: I can perform some mental gymnastics to force a metaphor about how just when things were finally going nicely for the first time in a while, with the cliffhanger resolved and some fancy big meals and a riverboat ride in the offing, oh no, their “high noon” is being “eclipsed” by this sudden old enemy machinations thing, but… yeah, I’d prefer more literal and less maybe metaphorical but maybe just “this sounds kind of cool, right?” titles, for my cheap men’s adventure sci-fi thriller series. I guess I’m just old-fashioned that way.

[1] That is, the previous Deathlands book.

Circle Thrice

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Nearly a year since the last Deathlands. Oops? But between a global pandemic and a new son, I’ve had things going on. …boy howdy. Things.

Circle Thrice is a weird book, even by the standards of the series so far. For one thing, it’s highly episodic. Except for the fact that our post-apocalyptic teleporting companions are not literally on the Mississippi River (it’s the Tennessee instead), the first two thirds of the story remind me a lot of Huckleberry Finn. Because there they go, downriver[1] on a raft, running into various weird people and situations[2] without very much fear of consequence, because, as you know by now, our heroes are very well-armed and other people generally are not. It’s a peaceful interlude, if you correct for mutant death around every corner.

Later, in the last third, we get to a more typical “heroes run into a baron who may not have their best interests in mind and/or former enemy makes a new appearance” situation, and that part is fine as well. I guess a thing I like about these books is that, 32 volumes in, they are simultaneously comfort food and something I’ve never read before. It’s not like I’m getting bored, clearly. Probably because they still keep me guessing with things like the first two aforementioned thirds, and with things like wondering if that wound that keeps being mentioned and which keeps not getting resolved is going to turn into a really big deal major character death or in fact is just an oops, need to stretch more and maybe take it easy for a day or so. It’s nice to not know for sure, instead of seeing it coming from miles away.

Also, though, the book title? It feels like a religious or especially pagan religious reference, right? No idea if it is one, my briefest of googles tells me not especially, but man it sounds like it. Also, it doesn’t mean a single thing relative to the story being told. Nothing. Pick any other random imperative verb and slightly archaic modifier, and it would fit equally well here.

So that’s weird.

[1] Did Huck and Jim go upriver? Because on the one hand, how do you stop being a slave by going farther south? But on the other hand, raft + river rarely results in an upriver trip. How is this the first time I’m asking myself this question?
[2] Villagers who have a raft that needs stealing. Non-consensual BDSM priest. Tour of the Civil War battlefield of Shiloh. Graceland[3]. Rabid villagers (not the same ones as the ones with the raft).
[3] Look. I’m not saying it’s on the Tennessee River. I’m not even saying the writer is saying that. It’s just another episodic thing that happened. They don’t all have to tie directly to the raft, okay?

Keepers of the Sun

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This week in the Deathlands, our heroes… are not in the Deathlands, actually. See, for the past three to five books, there have been hints of circa 17th C samurai that have been using the same teleportation gateways that our band of semi-heroes have been using to travel around the post-apocalyptic remains of what was once the United States. (So, y’know, near future sci-fi.) All of which to say, this time they come out in Japan!

Well, in the post-apocalyptic remains of what was once Japan. Because, you know, global thermonuclear war has only the one winning move, and nobody in this series took it.

Anyway: Keepers of the Sun is mostly interesting as a historical time capsule of the late ’80s[1], when we had an economically tense relationship with Japan. I have frequently lauded the sexual egalitarianism of these books, and I would have guessed that the racial parts would be the same. This is… kind of true here? Not as much as I wanted, but in some ways it felt like the blustery, rough-edged folk of the future were learning not to be racist against the Japanese[2] as a stand-in for the (let’s be honest) mostly working class truck driver type who became the biggest audience for this series.

I know for sure that I kept expecting [hereafter follow spoilers for a book you will never read] the other shoe to drop with the nominally noble-minded, Bushido-coded warlord[3], but no, he really was what he seemed. Even their points of contention over a possible mass invasion of the Deathlands could I think have been solved by the realization that even with the many uninhabitable or outright destroyed regions of North America, population reduction has resulted in plenty of room for everyone. But the mostly episodic nature of the series largely prevents that size of change to geopolitics, I suppose. So they found another way to resolve it.

[1] I’m trying very hard to disregard the 1996 publication date here.
[2] Except manga. Everyone stayed racist against manga.
[3] Okay, what I cannot especially defend is the premise that the meager remains of Japan’s main island would revert to circa 17th C warlords, samurai, ronin, and peasants. But since the US has mostly reverted to feudalism, it’s not as troublesome as it sounds at first glance.[4]
[4] I’m a little proud of that phrasing.

Crossways

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As usual, a weekend in the woods means another Deathlands book[1]. I don’t have a lot to say about it, because it was extremely transitional. Also because reviewing these is starting to feel a little like reviewing individual issues of comics? I think the latter is more true because this one was transitional. Like, when you have a really good four to six issue Spider-Man or Avengers run, and they’ve set up hints about what will happen next that’s big, but in between there are a couple of episodic villain of the week bits, with maybe two panels each dedicated to “no really, the next story is about to happen”? This is that but in book form.

And don’t get me wrong, the aggregate story is not hurt in the least by the transition, but there’s not a lot to say about it, nevertheless.

They’re still teleporting around, there are still dropped hints about teleporting Samurai too, plus a cast change and the first seeds of the big story that will follow whatever resolution occurs with the Japanese teleporters. Also: Crossways has enough dining establishments in a row to make me realize I can’t really wrap my head around either the economy or the distribution chains that would make some of the dishes they are making on the regular possible.

This last bit makes me sad, because I don’t want to accidentally ruin the series thirty books in by overthinking whether the world is plausible.

[1] Except I didn’t actually read a lot, and then took the rest of the month to finish. At least I am reading, unlike in August.