Darkman: In the Face of Death by Randall Boyll

 

(pb; 1994; final entry in the book-only Darkman quadrilogy.)

From the back cover

“Darkman: Once Peyton Westlake was a brilliant scientist conducing ground-breaking work with artificial skin─but his life was changed forever when vicious gangsters destroyed his lab and left him horribly burned beyond recognition. At that moment, Peyton Westlake died and re-emerged from the hellish fire as DARKMAN, a creature of the night driven by superhuman rage. Using his artificial skin process and his ability to become anyone for ninety-nine minutes, DARKMAN extracted a deadly revenge on the men who destroyed his life.

 

“Now, Darkman must take to the night once again to stop a vicious, rogue CIA agent known only as Rondo  who wants the secret of Darkman’s skin for his own evil plans. Once he possesses Darkman’s technology, he will use it to impersonate the president and forge an empire with himself as leader. With time running out, Darkman must somehow stop Rondo or else the entire world will fall under a madman’s will.” 

 

Review

Boyll’s fifth Darkman book is as comic book-y and over-the-top action-exciting as the franchise’s previous novels. This time out, there’s an international element and one-note, cliché-spouting villain (Harold Ferguson, a.k.a. Rondo R. Rondo) who is more comic relief than serious bad guy, one who tries to steal Peyton Westlake’s groundbreaking false-face formula while Westlake/Darkman and Darla (Jennifer) Dalton (from The Gods of Hell) try to rescue her ransomed American diplomat brother (Adam) from his South American captors. 

Tone-wise, Face is lighter than its prequels. It still has plenty of cinema-worth wild action scenes and settings (e.g., when Rondo runs goes crazy in a shopping mall, and Davis City, a jungle town where the US Confederacy still thrives). It also sticks to character-true storylines and events, another trademark element of Boyll’s Darkman works, with an open-ended series wrap-up that doesn’t demand a sequel while leaving it open for one─worth reading and owning, Face.

Replay by Ken Grimwood

 

(hb; 1986)

From the inside flap

“We have all fantasies about it. Especially men like Jeff Winston. At 43, he’s trapped in a tepid marriage and a dead-end job. Until he has a sudden, fatal heart attack and awakens in his eighteen-year-old body in 1963.

“Staring at a Playboy centerfold on his college dorm room wall, Jeff Winston realizes that his memories of the next 25 years are intact. He knows the future of stocks like IBM and Xerox. He knows who will win the Kentucky Derby. He is going to replay his life─living once again through the assassinations of the 1960s, Vietnam, Watergate, the Reagan revolution.

“The odds against the Dodgers winning the 1963 World Series in four straight games are astronomical. But Jeff makes a bet and with the money that brings him, he builds a multibillion-dollar fortune, becomes one of the most powerful men in the world.

“And again. . .

“Until he turns 43 and dies again. When he awakens in 1963, he can make other choices. . . from uninhibited hedonism to a search for understanding. Or perhaps love─with a woman who, like Jeff, is a replayer. How many more times must they lose each other and all they hold dear? And why have they been chosen to replay their lives?”

 

Review

Replay is a mainstream, well-paced and character-centric science fiction/reliving-your-life novel, solid in its descriptions and story-freshening elements to keep it entertaining and interesting. Good read, this, worth checking out.

The Sandman: The Wake by Neil Gaiman and various artists

 

(1995-6, 2012 – graphic novel, collects issues 70-75 of the comic book The Sandman. “Introduction” by Mikal Gilmore. Eleventh book in the thirteen-book Sandman graphic novel series.)

 

Overall review

Wake is a solid wrap-up to the original run of The Sandman comic books (additional books within the series are later-published prequels or side stories). For the most part, it’s short and sharp (with the exception of issue 75, “The Tempest,” which runs long). Great series.

As in previous Sandman graphic novels, the artists, letterers and colorists who bring Gaiman’s transcend-the-genre writing to vivid, distinctive representation.

 

Review, issue by issue

“The Wake: Chapter One” (#70): “Dreamers, guests, celebrants and mourners” gather in the necropolis Litharge “at stony crossroads in the shadow of the Quinsy Mountains” to acknowledge Morpheus’s death. Meanwhile, his successor─the new Dream of the Endless, previously known as Daneil Hall─holds court with a select few (Cain, etc.).

 

“The Wake: Chapter Two” (#71): More conversations between the new incarnation of the Dream of the Endless and his immediate staff are shown as are other guests─a few of them cape-and-cowl types and supernatural magicians.

 

“The Wake: Chapter Three” (#72): The Wake begins in earnest. Matthew the raven decides what the next phase of his life will be. Dream of the Endless prepares to meet his siblings.

 

“The Wake: Chapter Four” (#73): In modern times, Rob Gadling─actually Morpheus’s undying drinking buddy Hob Gadling─attends a Renaissance Faire with his girlfriend (Gwen). Gadling has a conversation with one of Morpheus’s siblings, who has a pertinent question for him.

 

“Exile” (#74): An older Asian man has a dream about a desert, a kitten, and Morpheus.

 

“The Tempest” (#75): 1610 AD. Will Shakespeare writes, has conversations with his daughter (Judith) and his wife, and is visited by Morpheus.