Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer: Prisoner of the Horned Helmet by James Silke

(pb; 1988: first book in James Silke’s Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer quadrilogy)

From the back cover

“In an age before Atlantis rose, an age rife with sorcery and violence, the earth trembled beneath the all-conquering hooves of the Kitzaak Horde, and only one man, Gath of Baal, dares to confront the Kitzaak lances, to stand between the never-defeated armies and the lush valley that will, long millennia in the future, be known as the Mediterranean Sea. To save the peace People of the Forest, Gath must dice with the gods, and the price he must pay is to become death made flesh, the Prisoner of the Horned Helmet.”

Review

Fans of Robert E. Howard’s Conan and other hypermasculine “men’s adventures” may find Prisoner to be a worthwhile purchase. Silke’s lusty, sometimes bordering-on-poetic writing highlights this brutal, basic and adjective-rich storyline and its well-written genre trope characters (sly magicians and intellectuals; wan, ripe-for-sex, scantily clad maidens/seductresses; cannon fodder soldiers; and, most important, steel-wielding, burly mega-warriors, who live mostly to tear men limb from limb). 

This is a work that embraces the magic-sex-hack-and-slash pathos of near-primordial humanity, one that predates─and would likely repudiate─our culture’s current P.C.-overdrive awareness, so if you’re looking for gender equality and nuance, do not read this book.

Prisoner is a great B-movie read for those who do not mind fantastic, Conan-raw, dark and violent takes on human nature and everything that stems from it. Followed by Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer: Lords of Destruction.

The Thirty-First Floor by Peter Wahlöö (a.k.a. Per Wahlöö)

(pb; 1966, a.k.a. Murder on the 31^st Floor. First book in the Inspector Jensen duology.)

From the back cover

“In a chill Northern country, the welfare state has crushed the population’s spirit, eradicated its individuality. Rebellion is unknown. Suddenly, a tremor of unfamiliar terror is felt when a bomb is announced to explode in the skyscraper office of a powerful, mind-polluting publisher. Chief Inspector Jensen is directed to apprehend the terrorist within a week. Following a series of misleading trails and false confessions, he, himself, is forced to become a cold-blooded murderer. His crime reveals the truth about the thirty-first floor.”

Review

Thirty-First reads like George Orwell’s 1984 structured as a police procedural, with prose that is as bareboned as Richard Stark’s twenty-four-book Parker series. Its protagonist, Chief Inspector Jensen is a cipher─unemotional, hyper-focused and efficient as a robot─as he investigates a bomb threat to an influential and groupthink-pushing publishing company. Every suspect he talks to brings him closer to disturbing truths that shatter up his automaton-like existence, even as the deadline for his investigation wrap-up looms closer and closer. All of these elements─sketched-out characters, waste-no-words writing, fast pacing, etc., slowly ratchet up the tension to a stunning end-line that made me want to re-read Thirty-First in the near future, with the knowledge gleaned from having read it before. This is a great, chilling and classic (in the good sense, not just older) read, one of the few books that I intend to keep in my collection.

Followed by The Steel Spring.

Criminal: The Last of the Innocent by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

(pb; 2015: sixth graphic novel in the Criminal series, collecting Criminal: The Last of the Innocent issues 1-4)

From the back cover

“Riley Richards got it all. . . The hottest girl in school and a ticket to the big time, so why isn’t he happy now? Why his he getting involved in gambling and drugs and shady characters in the city? Why can’t he forget the life he left behind in small town Brookview? And why is he suddenly plotting murder?”

Review

Innocent is a familiar, seemingly-nice-guy-with-nasty-secrets work, made excellent by great artwork and writing, which imbues this pulpy graphic novel with a few fresh twists in a tired genre. Worth owning, this.

Star Trek: The New Voyages edited by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath

(pb; 1976: story anthology)

Overall review

Voyages is a fan-fiction anthology, published by Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and his company. As anthologies go, it is worthwhile purchase─mostly because of its first four tales. The rest of the works are not terrible, but they are typical, nothing to get excited about. Largely entertaining read, this, followed by another anthology, Star Trek: The New Voyages 2.

Stories

“Ni Var” – Claire Gabriel: Spock’s personality aspects─human and Vulcan─are divided into two physical-twin versions, a situation that affects the fate of the Enterprise as well.

This story strikes a good, Trek-true tone, with its characterization, events and pacing─its dilemma is character-based, personal yet universal. 

“Intersection Point” – Juanita Coulson: A strange, amorphous energy field─sentient?─attaches itself to the Enterprise, starting a short countdown-to-death for the entire crew. “Intersection” reads like an unaired episode of the show, gripping with its life-or-death situation, and its characters’ interactions, down to William Shatner’s over-the-top portrayal of James Kirk.

“The Enchanted Pool” – Marcia Ericson: On the planet of Mevinna, a nymph-like woman (Phyllida) attempts to distract Spock─sans crewmen─away from tracking down a Federation device hijacked by the Andorans. This is a delightful tale, with a mini-twist or two, and one of my favorite entries in this collection.

“Visit to a Weird Planet Revisited” – Ruth Berman: While shooting on the set of the show Star Trek, William Shatner, Forrest Kelley and Leonard Nimoy find themselves in another reality, where they have replaced their Trek characters, who are real people─and who have replaced the actors on the Trek set.

This is a funny, insider’s-view and spot-on alternate take on Trek ideas and characters, easily one of the best tales in this anthology.

“The Face on the Barroom Floor” – Eleanor Arnason and Ruth Berman: During shore leave on the planet Krasni, Kirk gets in a bar fight and goes to jail. A skeleton crew on the Enterprise, led by Spock, tries to find him so they can depart for an important mission.

This was an okay story. It feels padded out with clichés, nothing exciting nor anything that expands the Trek mythos.

“The Hunting” – Doris Beetem: McCoy accompanies Spock during a Vulcan ritual (mok farr: “time of remembrance”), where Vulcans mind meld with a wild animal in order to, among other things, expand their mindset. After Spock does this with an owltiger on the plant Rhinegelt, McCoy is stalked by the now-animalistic Vulcan.

“Hunting“ is another okay, padded-out story, this one loaded-with-Edgar-Rice-Burrough-esque adjectives during Spock’s mental transformation. Its cheesy end-line, uttered by McCoy, reads like something Kirk would say─not McCoy.

“The Winged Dreamers” – Jennifer Guttridge: Many of the Enterprise‘s crew members, while on shore leave, begin hallucinating and refuse to leave the paradisal planet they are visiting.

“Winged” is a solid work, with its well-written (if oft-used) Trek setup: nothing special, but not egregious either.

“Mind-Sifter” – Shirley S. Maiewski: Kirk disappears for two years while the crew of the Enterprise searches for him.

This is a chatty, okay story that would benefit from ruthless editing. It would also benefit from an editor trimming Maiewski’s overly emotional and also-chatty dialogue (especially in the case of Spock, who comes off like a trauma counselor instead of, well, Spock). Its plot is interesting, would’ve been great, had it not been hobbled by the above concerns.

“Sonnet from the Vulcan: Omicron Ceti Three” – Shirley Meech: Reads like a solid Vulcan sonnet. (Not a poetry fan.)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind by Steven Spielberg

(1977; movie tie-in novel)

From the back cover

“Earth’s greatest adventure had begun. The world was being readied for. . . Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

“To Claude LeCombe, director of an international silence group, it meant the culmination of a search that drove him to the globe’s farthest corners.

“To Julian Guiler, it meant the last shred of hope for the recovery of her little son who disappeared on the most extraordinary night of her life.

“To Roy Neary, it meant an answer to the startling mystery that had increasingly driven him to the emotional edge.

“And to the rest of humanity, it meant the beginning of the most dramatic event in the history of the world.

“It will lead to the inescapable conclusion: we are not alone.”

Review

The book version of Close is a solid read. It doesn’t add anything new for those familiar with the film, but it’s an entertaining distraction if you’re bored at work (where I read it), waiting at the DMV or someplace like that.