Jack Cloudie

Jack Cloudie by Stephen Hunt

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


War brews between the Kingdom of Jackals and Cassarabia. A young thief named Jack Keats is pressed into service on an experimental airship, the Iron Patridge after a botched bank job. A Cassarabian slave named Omar learns of his true parentage, only to have it stolen from him. As Jack and Omar learn what it means to be men, will war be averted or will the two world powers engage in a conflict that will destroy them both?

Jack Cloudie fleshes out two aspects of Stephen Hunt's Jackalian saga that have been repeatedly mentioned but never really explored: the airship navy and the womb mages of Cassarabia. It tells the story of Jack Keats gaining acceptance among the crew of the Iron Patridge and Omar becoming a guardsman and learning to not be a lazy ass all the time. The threads are united by a vizier's attempts to wrest the rulership of Cassaraba away from the Eternal Caliph.

Stephen Hunt's steampunk series continues to move forward, although it seems to get more wobbly as it goes. This was not my favorite of his books. Aside from a returning character, most of the cast didn't really engage me. In fact, I found some of them bland and some of them irritating. There wasn't a whole lot going on, either, not compared to his other books. There wasn't a whole lot of excitement to be had, a pity since I've been waiting forever for him to do an airship novel. Both plot threads were fairly standard coming of age tales.

So why did I give it a 3 after I just shat all over it? Well, three reasons.
1 - Commodore Black is the man! I missed Old Blackie. He's easily my favorite character in the entire series.
2 - The womb mages of Cassarabia had been talked about for four books prior to this one. Hunt built them up quite a bit but they were even more horrifying than I imagined. The Cassarabian culture wound up being my favorite part of the book.
3 - While I thought it was a tad predictable, I loved that the Iron Partridge wound up being sentient.

So, Jack Cloudie isn't a bad book. It's just not the action-packed adventure I was hoping for from Stephen Hunt. It's a solid three.



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Copeland Valley Sampler

Copeland Valley Sampler by Chuck Copeland
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Copeland Valley Sampler is a collection of strange and unusual short stories, written by the strange and unusual, for the strange and unusual.

Reviewing a short story collection is tough, especially since I normally hate reading them. This one has its fair share of gems, though. You've got Chuck Copeland's tale of a slap bracelet landing him in the psych ward, William Pauley's tale of a man being reincarnated as part of a Japanese game show, Magen Toole's tale of reality unraveling, and many others, including one Jordan Krall story that doesn't mention foot fetishes at all and another one that does. Garret Cook's tale, the Driller Killer, is up to his usual standards, and the Matthew Revert tales make me want to track down more of his stuff. Heck, I wouldn't say there's a dud in the entire collection.

However, one story tickled my innards like none other. The story was Nyuck, Nyuck by Eric Mays. "What was the story about?" you ask. Well, it's a western set in Bethlehem, Texas. After William Burroughs is left in Bethlehem to kick his smack habit by his pals Jack Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg, three outlaws show up. The outlaws are Howard, Fine, and Howard, otherwise known as the Three Stooges. Ultraviolent hilarity ensues.

The Copeland Valley Sampler was well worth my time and an entertaining way to spend a couple afternoons. If you're in the mood for a sampling of quirky stories, give it a try.

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X-Men: Days of Future Past

The Uncanny X-Men: Days of Future Past by Chris Claremont
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In a dystopian future, Kate Pryde is sent back in time, switching consciousness with the Kitty Pryde of 1980, to prevent the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly. Will she be able to prevent her timeline from happening or will the Senator be killed, setting off a shock wave of anti-mutant hysteria?

First off, there are a ton of X-Men trades called Days of Future Past. This one is the 48 pager.

I stumbled upon it in a used bookstore that I hate and figured I was winning one back for the good guys considering it's low price. I've been wanting to read this story for a couple decades and never got around to it. Was it worth the wait? I'll let you know in a bit.

The story itself is pretty cool. The future version of Kate Pride goes back in time to rally the X-Men against the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and save a Senator's life. Cyclops is gone after the events of the Dark Phoenix Saga and Storm is leading the X-Men for the first time. Angel is back and the rest of the lineup is pretty much the standard Byrne-Claremont lineup.

The dystopian future was my favorite part of the story. I liked seeing Franklin Richards, Rachel Summers, and a wheelchair-bound Magneto, as well as both Wolverine and Colossus with white at the temples. Do comic characters never go gray in a pattern other than the Reed Richards look? Speaking of Reed Richards, the graveyard with all the superhero headstones in it really sold how bad the future had become after Robert Kelly's death. As for the present day part of the story, it's pretty much standard superhero fare for the time. I did like that they hinted about a connection between Mystique and Nightcrawler way back then.

One observation I had was that Wolverine's healing factor wasn't so ridiculous in either branch of the story. In the present, he's brought to his knees by Pyro's attack and, in the future, he's roasted and killed by a Sentinel. Wolverine goes through more crap than that in two or three issues of his current comic without missing a beat.

Claremont and Byrne raised the bar for other comics with their X-Men run. Byrne's art was at the head of the pack in its day and people still use what Claremont did as a model.

So, Was it worth the wait? Let's just say my 14 year old self would have enjoyed it a lot more than my 34 year old self. It's still definitely worth a read and was revolutionary for its time but it's a little on the dated side.



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The Old Gods Waken

The Old Gods Waken by Manly Wade Wellman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While Silver John is staying with his friend Creed Forshay and Creed's son Luke, odd things start happening, odd things that seem to center on Forshay's new neighbors, two Englishmen named Brummitt and Hooper Voth. Can Silver John stop the Voth's from using Druidic magic to release an ancient evil?

Silver John is back in a full length novel. If you've read Who Fears the Devil, you know what to expect. The Old Gods Waken reads like an expanded version of a Silver John short story. All the things I liked about the Silver John short stories were here: Silver John himself, his bits of lore, and ancient evils lurking just around the corners of the Appalachian mountains.

The supporting cast was a little ahead of its time. Reuben Manco could have easily been a stereotypical Indian character and it was nice to see him mocking such stereotypes. Holly was a much stronger character than most female characters of the period, back when women in pulp stories were either victims or bate. The Voth brothers were suitably creepy and I loved how Wellman wove the Raven Mockers of Indian mythology into a story about druids.

It wasn't all roses and sunshine, though. I felt like parts of the story were a little on the convenient side and I didn't think the writing was as good as it was in the short stories in Who Fears the Devil.

Really, no big complaints. It was nice to read about Silver John again. I'd give it a 3.5 if I could.

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Peckinpah

Peckinpah: an Ultraviolent Romance by D. Harlan Wilson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


When a psychopath named Samson Thataway and his gang, the Fuming Garcias, ride into Dreamfield, Indiana, it means trouble for the small town. During an orgy of rape and murder, they made two mistakes: they raped and murdered Felix Soandso's wife, and they left Felix alive...

Peckinpah is an absurdist tribute to the films of Sam Peckinpah. While my summary makes it seem like a fairly standard revenge tale, it's not. It's so weird that even though it was less than 110 pages, I couldn't have taken much more.

Peckinpah seems to take place in the same world as DHW's SciKungFi trilogy. Amerika was mentioned a few times, as were the goat-headed men. Since the book was a tribute to Peckinpah films, I knew how it would end but it was still fun getting there.

That's about all I can articulate about Peckinpah right now. It's slightly less weird than Dr. Identity and way less weird than Codename Prague. It's an enjoyable little book and a good way to spend a couple hours.



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The Sorrow King

The Sorrow King by Andersen Prunty

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The town of Gethsemane, Ohio, is rocked by a string of suicides that some are calling The Suicide Virus. Meanwhile, troubled young teenager Steven Wrigley meets the girl of his dreams. But does his new lady love have some sort of connection to the suicide plague?

Some people seem to be afraid of the bizarro genre, thinking it's full of things like talking penises running for president, super heroes wielding magical dildos, people having sex with fruit, and pieces of furniture having sex with one another. While this is certainly true in some cases, it is not always the case. I like to think of the bizarro as writers writing what they feel like without the constraints of a conventional publisher. This book is a perfect example.

The Sorrow King is a chilling tale of a demon-like creature, the Sorrow King, that drives teenagers to commit suicide so that it can feed on their misery and the misery their deaths cause. Andersen Prunty does a great job maintaining a creepy mood throughout as the Sorrow King tempts his victims. Up until a huge twist near the end, I could easily see the Sorrow King coming from a major publishing house. Then came the twist, which I couldn't see any major publishing house putting out.

The characters of Steven and his father are very well done. I liked the interplay between them as it nicely summed up their relationship, more like friends than father and son. The character of Elise could have used a bit more developing but I bought Steven falling for her so fast. After all, I was a hormone-driven teenage boy once.

Andersen Prunty's writing continues to impress me. I enjoyed Zerostrata quite a bit and, while it's a completely different kind of book, I enjoyed The Sorrow King even more. I almost wish I would have saved it until Halloween.

To sum things up, The Sorrow King is one the best bizarro books I've read so far and I recommend it to all the Bizarro-curious (or Bi-curious, as Steve Lowe calls them) readers out there.









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Sunset at Blandings

Sunset At Blandings by P.G. Wodehouse

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


After falling in love with a man her mother deemed unsuitable, Victoria is whisked away to Blandings Castle until she "comes to her senses." Meanwhile, her uncle Sir James Piper has to take her to Blandings and finds that an old flame of his is staying there. How can these hearts ever be mended? Uncle Galahad to the rescue!

Here we have the unfinished novel P.G. Wodehouse was working on at his hospital bed at age 93. Even though it's a fragment, all the Wodehouse trademarks are there: lost love, imposters, and misunderstandings abound. Uncle Galahad uses his smooth pimpery in order to make things right. A Wodehouse novel is like running into an old friend and picking up right where you left off.

Aside from the novel fragment that takes up half of this book, there are also Wodehouse's semi-coherent notes on how the book was to end, speculations on the real life location of Blandings Castle based on travel times mentioned in the text, and end notes galore. While I would have preferred a complete novel to end the Blandings Saga, there wasn't much to complain about here, as long as the reader is aware it's a fragment coming in and not a complete novel.



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