Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Lost Cities

by on October 21, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Comics

The main problem with the early parts of the Gold Digger series, is that it can be a little scattered. The original story appeared in Mangazine, and then there is a four-issue mini-series, and then the long-running B&W series, and then the color series that is still going.

The first couple bits are in the first ‘pocket manga’ collection, but that’s also a smaller format, and I prefer the original comic-book size, especially with Perry’s earlier art and hand-written lettering. The Gold Bricks pick up with the start of the regular B/Wseries… leaving the earlier parts less accessible. (Though there is a colorized re-master in the works that will sort everything into place. Liking well-done B/W art as much as color, I’m of mixed feelings, as including eleven extra issues in the remaster will solve a lot of problems.)

So, this is the collection of the early mini-series at full size. As a Brenner print job, the glue isn’t that great, and my copy is slowly disintegrating.

As for the actual contents: it is great. This was Fred Perry’s second story, and about four-times as long as the previous one. The art is good, and features some nice washes from Perry; it does get a bit messy, and the lettering is uneven in a few places, but there’s a lot of energy.

And energy is the best way to describe Perry’s writing, as he’s borrowing from high-action movies for what he’s doing; most prominently the Indiana Jones films. Here, we start with a running aerial battle on the way to discover El Dorado, and there’s barely time to catch your breath for the rest of the story after Gina and Cheetah land safely a short distance outside the city. The story is structured all as one whole, and around being four issues at the same time, as each one technically deals with a different ‘lost city’, though the plot really focuses on two.

The cast expands a lot from the mere five characters of the original story, including several people who remain very prominent secondary characters all the way through through the latest I’ve seen (and are unlikely to ever drop off). Likewise, the plot and action expand to fill the pages, and the story rushes around with no space to slow down, coming to a satisfactory conclusion right at the end.

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A Conspiracy of Kings

by on October 13, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The fourth book of the Queen’s Thief series changes main characters again. This time, honors go to Sophos, returning from a primary character role in The Thief. The first section of the book is entirely arranged as him telling what has happened to him recently. Unlike most places where this is used, the point at which the tale is being told is about a third of the way through, but even though it breaks up a bit at that point, the storytelling doesn’t entirely stop, though much of is generally in the present again.

As I expected, the wider stage of politics is more of the driving force of this book. Sophos is the heir-presumptive to Sounis, a country currently tearing itself apart in a civil war, invaded by Attolia (two books back), and a target of Mede ambitions. The novel does an excellent job weaving a plot from rich material, and even better, works through Sophos’ insecurities, and how he motivates himself to get going. (“Now the choice was mine, and once it was made, I would have no right to blame anyone else for the consequences. Loss of that privilege, to blame others, unexpectedly stung.“)

It should be a fine place to enter the series fresh. Turner is obviously making sure these are all separate stories that can be enjoyed independently. However, having read the earlier books will certainly help here, and I certainly recommend starting from the beginning.

I think this is my favorite of the series so far. The return to the wider stage of The Queen of Attolia is welcome, and the examination of a man who would be king is well done. There is still a habit of purposefully leaving a couple things out of the narrative purely for a late reveal, which tends to irritate me a bit. However, it’s a bit more natural, and certainly not the gaping hole The Thief had.

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Over the Edge of the World

by on October 5, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This book gets a few ratings of ‘biography’, and… yes, actually, this is a fairly decent biography of Fernão de Magalhães, or Ferdinand Magellan, as it goes into his background and life as a whole. However, it is primarily about the Armada de Molucca and the circumnavigation of the world.

As a biography, it is more of a tragedy, as Magellan, a determined and ambitious man, is repeatedly snubbed by the King of Portugal, and Magellan goes to Spain with his plan to go west to get to the East. However, he is never truly trusted by the powers that be, and his authority over his five-ship fleet critically undermined before it even leaves port. Worse, Magellan himself doesn’t seem to have been a great leader, never developing a large degree of trust with most of his subordinates.

But he can rise to the occasion in a crisis. After losing two ships to a mutiny, with the other two standing off neutral, he manages to reassert authority over four ships with just the resources of the crew on his flagship. But outside of crisis, his performance can be erratic, and this shows in the very inconsistent dealings with the natives of the Philippines, where he puts himself into a hopeless situation and gets killed.

The coverage of the rest of the voyage is no less detailed than that of the first half, as Bergreen has collated as many primary sources as he could to assemble the full story of the first journey around the world. This mostly means two surviving accounts written during the voyage, but there are of course other accounts from crew members written afterward. Some of these have never appeared in English, and Bergreen introduces them for the first time in English here. He also occasionally makes use of later sources for descriptions of what an area they went through was like.

Despite this attention to detail, this is still a ‘popular’ account of the expedition, and extremely readable. Sadly, as such, it is deficient in maps. In fact, there’s no maps showing the details of his route at all. There is a good section of plates, but in the Kindle edition this is unhelpfully stuck behind the index, and I had no idea it existed until I started flipping through the end to check for maps.

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Tailchaser’s Song

by on September 27, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

I have the Kindle version of this, which means there’s a few OCR glitches scattered about. However, unlike most such I’ve seen, they don’t become more prevalent the further through the book you go. Overall, the electronic version is in good shape, with a spate of notable glitches in the middle.

It also means it has the fifteenth anniversary edition’s introduction (from 2000) about Tad Williams’ early writing career. As a dog-person who was suddenly having to deal with a number of cats, this book is partly his exploration of what cats are like, and he does a good job at it. This is an all-animal cast (there are a few M’an present, but they don’t get much past the status of mobile object… which is about right), and is well drawn, without getting in the way of the action, or letting you forget that these are all cats.

Past that, this is a fairly typical epic fantasy plot, with an old evil returning to threaten the current world. This shouldn’t be a surprise, since fantasy has been his preferred genre over the course of his career. He’s also a big fan of extensive world-building, which also shows up everywhere else. Here, it feels a bit more shallow, though it is certainly omnipresent in the book, and some it is also the mainspring of the main plot.

There’s also a secondary plot, as what Tailchaser initially sets off to do isn’t really related to that main plot, and wrapping that up turns into a slightly extended denouement which is also well done.

Overall, it is a bit predictable in many places, and similarly feels like it doesn’t quite live up to its promise. But… there is a lot to like here. Williams’ writing would grow from here, but he had already put in the time and effort to tell a good story with its own world.

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Roman Centurions 753-31 BC

by on September 15, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

I was a little skeptical of a Men-at-Arms sub-series dedicated only to the Roman Centurion, but it does make some real sense. Mostly, they’re the lowest rank that is going to regularly come to the attention of prominent people, so we have a few more individuals whose careers are discussed. The introduction points out that as the main bulk of officers, their discipline and example was instrumental in leading Roman armies to victory; I kind of thought that would make a good plug for an Elite series instead of Man-At-Arms, but I assume there’s just not enough content to fill out a longer title.

This first volume covers from founding of Rome through end of the Republic. As usual, there is a good combing of the sources, and lots of pictures of various artifacts and art (in black and white) depicting centurions. The color plates are quite good, and interestingly, while three of plates are traditional no-background military figure art, but the other five are full pieces, and among the best I’ve seen out of the MAA line lately (not that I’ve seen a lot of the more recent books). I think that makes for a good mix, and presumably keeps the art budget under control.

Overall, it’s about as limited a book as I supposed. Within its limits, it is very good however. If you want to get into some of the details of the Roman army, this is a worthwhile addendum, but if you want how it fought… there’s a few interesting tales in here (especially for the earlier period), but this isn’t where to go.

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