Review Category: Books

Lost in a Pyramid collects a dozen short stories published between 1869 and 1910, each featuring mummies in one way or another. A few of the tales are by writers a casual reader may be familiar with, such as Louisa May Alcott (of Little Women fame), Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Fu Manchu creator Sax Rohmer, the subject matter offering a differing approach to the works that made them famous. Others were written by writers whose fame has long since dissipated and a few whose true identities behind their pseudonyms remain a mystery to this day.

Being mummy tales, several of the stories involve curses, usually invoked by the thoughtless of raiding treasures from tombs wisely left alone for millennia, with each take on the popular notion of the bandage-wrapped revenging undead differing from the others in some way, preventing the plots from becoming repetitive.

As the date range of the stories’ initial publications coincides more or less with the zenith of the British Empire’s reach and power, a certain colonial arrogance comes through at times, to the extent that you can actually hear the plummiest of “bally-ho, what-what?” accents sneering through waxed moustaches at the uncivilized savagery of Johnny Foreigner. This contemptible arrogance for any culture beyond that of the megalomaniacal island nation prevents any kind of empathy with the narrators, despite such an attitude clearly intending the opposite effect.

Another recurring theme is that casting of mummies not as forces of vengeance meting out punishment on glorified grave robbers, but as sultry and exotic maidens free with their appearance and affections who tempt steadfast and proper young gentlemen away from the pale and fragile English roses they are contrasted against. These seem to comment not on Britain’s attitudes towards its colonies and protectorates, but of the social constraints of Victorian society.

Being written at a time when tales of the supernatural were far less prevalent, the structure of the stories often doesn’t quite conform to what you’d expect, with some feeling it necessary to specify just how unbelievable is the tale the reader is about to experience, while several quite abrupt endings have little regard for explanations of exactly why the mystical shenanigans featured in them actually occurred.

While the collection is an interesting read and offers up varying perspectives on attitudes towards British colonialism amidst examples of a subgenre as it initially developed, much of the action appears a little tame to the modern reader. Something more for historical or scholarly value rather than true entertainment.

LOST IN A PYRAMID / AUTHOR: VARIOUS / PUBLISHER: BRITISH LIBRARY / RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 6TH

Test pilot Mike Melvill wrestles with the controls of SpaceShipOne, as its liquid nitrous oxide rocket motor blasts him beyond the speed of sound to a target altitude of 100 kilometres. After reaching the top of his parabolic flight path, the horizontal stabilisers refuse to line-up for reentry. The back-up systems fail to respond and Mike has seconds before going into a fatal spin. 

On that cliff-hanger Julian starts her story of the how the XPrize competition came into being, to inspire commercial manned flights into space that would achieve what only Governments had done before.

She flashbacks from Mike’s 21st June 2004 spaceflight, to the home of 8-year-old Peter Diamandis, where on the 20th July 1969 he is transfixed by the television images of Neil Armstrong emerging from the Eagle lunar lander to become the first man to walk on the Moon.

From that date Peter, like thousands of other kids glued to their TV screens that fateful day, wanted to be an astronaut. Unlike most of us, Peter doggedly pursued his dream of getting into space. This took him from making rockets with his mates to studying aerospace engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a sideline to him gaining a medical degree at Harvard. In his student years he founded the Students for Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) organisation, followed by the International Space University and a satellite launching company, Microsat Launch Systems. 

Frustrated by the reliance on large, slow, bureaucratic governments to build spaceships for human flight, Peter was inspired by reading that Charles Lindbergh’s epic non-stop flight over the Atlantic in 1927 would never have occurred if it wasn’t for the prize of $25,000 for the first person to accomplish this feat. He soon realised that his dreams could be blasted into reality if a prize of $10 million was offered to the first company to launch a person into sub-orbital space.

A number of companies took up the XPrize challenge, including Steve Bennett in the U.K., Dumitru Popescu in Romania, Armadillo Aerospace, Jim Akkerman and TGV Rockets in the U.S.A., two teams in Canada and Pablo de Leon in Argentina. Julian mentions their different approaches to achieving the goal of getting a craft capable of carrying three crew into space twice in two weeks, but most space is given over to the main contender, Burt Rutlan and his SpaceShipOne air-launched rocket. 

This is a fascinating insight into how childhood dreams are translated into hard won reality. 

HOW TO MAKE A SPACESHIP / AUTHOR: JULIAN GUTHRIE / PUBLISHER: BANTAM PRESS / RELEASE DATE: 22ND SEPTEMBER 2016

George A. Romero has long regarded his 1977 film Martin, the story of a shy, alienated young man’s descent into vampirism, as his best work. It’s a film as satisfyingly complex and relevant today as it was when it was made: ‘its quietude and reflective, melancholy tone’ (as author Jez Winship remarks) ‘are in marked contrast to the violent, confrontational nature of the new breed of independent American horror movies which appeared in the 1970s.’

Winship’s new book on Martin, one of the first in a new series of Midnight Movie Monographs from PS Publishing and editor Neil Snowdon, does an exceptional job in exploring the complexities and nuances that make Martin a modern masterpiece. Eschewing both the ‘linguistic walls of arid language’ that surround much academic film criticism and the ‘sound-bites and exclamation marks’ of mainstream media-speak, Snowden’s mission statement with Midnight Movie Monographs is instead to offer up passionate, incisive, intelligent and accessible film writing; Winship’s Martin does this and much more besides.

Approaching Martin on its own terms rather than imposing cultural theories on it, Winship offers a close reading that takes us through the film almost shot by shot. As Winship makes clear in the opening of his book, Romero’s Martin invites personal engagement, and Winship has obviously lived with this film for much of his life. In short, he has a deep understanding of its many layers and is able to guide us through them in a way that enhances our appreciation of it. While much film writing can feel curiously incidental to the film(s) it addresses, Winship’s book functions as a close companion to Romero’s Martin, clarifying and amplifying its meanings. It’s a beautifully – even poetically – written guide that evokes Martin perfectly in its descriptions of scenes, shots, and moments, and how we might read them.

Whilst readers looking for a detailed account of Martin’s production history and related trivia may not find much here that has not already been published elsewhere, those wanting to journey through Romero’s masterpiece in depth will find this book essential reading. A monograph on Martin was long overdue and it’s difficult to imagine anyone doing a better job of it than Winship does here. There are times, perhaps, when he could shore up his discussion with a few more references to other important writings on Martin; but that’s a minor quibble, as it is Winship’s own voice that we want to engage with, and it’s a voice that’s fully authoritative, intuitive and sensitive to the film’s inner life, which all make for a wonderfully compelling read.

The Midnight Movie Monograph on Martin is available in a handsomely-bound limited first edition hardback; it will sit beautifully on your bookshelf next to the DVD itself, where it belongs.

MARTIN (MIDNIGHT MOVIE MONOGRAPHS) / AUTHOR: JEZ WINSHIP / PUBLISHER: PS PUBLISHING (ELECTRIC DREAMHOUSE IMPRINT) / RELEASE DATE: 24TH SEPTEMBER

Launching at this year’s FantasyCon alongside Jez Winship’s Martin is Theatre of Blood, the second title from PS Publishing’s new Midnight Movie Monographs series, edited by Neil Snowdon. Dedicated to outstanding but neglected offerings, the Midnight Movie Monographs series showcases the film writings of a disparate group of genre authors and filmmakers as well as film critics. Certainly, Snowdon could not have chosen two more different films to launch the series, signalling the range of movies and approaches that Midnight Movie Monographs promises.

The Vincent Price vehicle Theatre of Blood is a cult curiosity that richly deserves the epithet Midnight Movie. Directed by Douglas Hickox in 1973, it was reviled on first release (a review in Monster Mag described it at the time as having more blood and violence than in the whole of World War 2) but has since become critically acclaimed as a savage satire of the acting profession. It’s a delightfully campy, grisly film, and Probert’s Midnight Movie Monograph does it ample justice.

Probert is a novelist whose books, The Nine Deaths of Dr. Valentine and The Hammer of Dr. Valentine, are, by his own admission, inspired by the films of Vincent Price in general and Theatre of Blood in particular. Fascinated by TOB from an early age, and possessing a similar tongue-in-cheek macabre theatricality in his fiction, Probert is the perfect choice of author for this Midnight Movie Monograph and Probert’s book is filled with deliciously meaty morsels about the making of the film, as well as witty and erudite comments on the film itself.

Probert approaches Part One of the book as a commentary in eleven Shakespearean chapters, and this makes for an informative and enjoyable read as we spot the many references to the Bard. As Probert guides us through the production of the film, providing plenty of background on the actors and filmmakers, he also gives an amusing commentary on the action of the film itself. Part Two is devoted to an appreciation of Vincent Price’s performance as Edward Lionheart; followed by an essay on the score composed by Michael J. Lewis. Part Two concludes with a lengthy interview conducted with Lewis himself, which is both entertaining and in-depth, followed by an account of the 2005 stage version of Theatre of Blood (which saw Jim Broadbent taking the Price role). As a finale there are a few words of appreciation from Probert’s Dr. Valentine in the flesh!

Much like the film it explores, Probert’s Midnight Movie Monograph on Theatre of Blood is rife with witty Shakespearean revelry; in short, it’s highly enjoyable, and highly recommended.

THEATRE OF BLOOD (MIDNIGHT MOVIE MONOGRAPHS) / AUTHOR: JOHN LLEWELLYN PROBERT / PUBLISHER: PS PUBLISHING (ELECTRIC DREAMHOUSE IMPRINT) / RELEASE DATE: 24TH SEPTEMBER

The gothic space-opera world of Warhammer 40,000 is a galaxy wide and ten thousand years long. So it might come as no surprise that the books that detail this world are as vast and as numerous as the Warhammer 40,000 setting itself. This can often be a barrier to entry; with so many books to choose from it can be hard to know where to start. Hachette’s latest series, the Warhammer Legends Collection solves this by providing its own specially curated list. Of course, with a series like that, you’re going to have to open with something strong and memorable. You need something tightly written, atmospheric and that also happens to explain the universe to the casual reader. With all that in mind, there is only really one choice, Aaron Dembski Bowden’s The First Heretic, which was initially published in 2010.

Warhammer 40,000’s core story is one of inter-galactic civil war. Mankind has had its up and downs, but by the time it reaches the 30th millennium, it is approaching annihilation. A strong leader, a being known only as The Emperor, was able to bring mankind from the brink, thanks in part to his own genetically engineered ‘sons’, who lead legions of genetically enhanced soldiers (called Space Marines) to crush all alien threats. Alas, due to supernatural corruption, heresy lead to a civil war, pitting the Emperor’s chosen against each other and plunging mankind into ten thousand years of darkness.

Dembski-Bowden’s The First Heretic was originally part of a series that described the events of this heresy. It is the tale of Lorgar Aurelian, son of the all-powerful Emperor and leader of a legion of zealots known as the Word Bearers. This Legion has been conquering whole worlds in the Emperor’s name, venerating him as a god. This angers the Emperor, who humbles Lorgar by sending other Legions to correct his mistake. Rather than accepting that his father is not a divine being Lorgar goes on a quest to uncover the true source of his own mystic power. What he discovers alters the fate of the galaxy.

Aaron doesn’t shy away from the themes here; this is a book about the nature of faith, the sins of the father and the humanity-defining quest for a purpose. It contains some frankly beautiful and powerful writing. At its core, The First Heretic is a space opera novel about space soldiers blowing stuff up, but the elements of horror, angst and discovery really make it stand out. It also comes with some lovely art plates, which is a bonus. An excellent start to the Warhammer Legends Collection.

WARHAMMER LEGENDS COLLECTION– THE FIRST HERETIC / AUTHOR: AARON DEMBSKI-BOWDEN / PUBLISHER: HACHETTE PARTWORKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Soon after discovering a mysterious baby in the woods and beginning to learn magic from the crabby old woman who lives there, young Mandigo is suddenly whisked off the Bloodstone Wizard Academy to be tutored in controlling his Gift. Along the way the hidden truths of his life become revealed.

Mandigo and the Hellhounds reads something like an attempted novelisation of an anonymously authored legend, but unfortunately not a very good one. Every story beat is relayed in a matter-of-fact fashion without embellishment or barely even any reaction, meaning that the overall emotion running through the story is utter indifference. While it’s difficult to be certain whether the bland prose is the fault of the author or the translator, it’s probably not unfair to assume the former given that this is Reemark’s debut novel.

Various hints indicate the story takes place on an After the Fall Earth following an event known as the Storm, but it’s a piece of set dressing that, like much of the rest of the book, has little bearing of the advancement of the story. Characters drift in and out of the plot without having any real impact on Mandigo, nor are they themselves developed in any way, to the extent that they are merely names on the page. Even the few for whom some minor secret is divulged still have no bearing on anything that takes place.

The base concept of a fantasy saga’s protagonist ending up the apprentice to the dark lord actually had the potential to be a quite interesting variation on the archetypical hero’s journey – imagine if Luke Skywalker had been tutored by Darth Vader – but the narrative’s lack of focus squanders the opportunity, shuffling its way through short and often disconnected chapters that never truly go anywhere. While it never approaches, say, the unendurable tedium of Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle, the story takes too long to figure out where its actually heading and what it needs to do to get there, while along the way it consists of little more than an assortment of inconsequential events and arbitrary revelations neither foreshadowed nor built upon.

Mandigo and the Hellhounds is the first book of a trilogy, but it has a long way to go before it develops into the compelling saga of darkness versus light it clearly believes itself to be.

MANDIGO AND THE HELLHOUNDS / AUTHOR: ANDERS REEMARK / PUBLISHER: ELSEWHEN PRESS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
 

For those of you who haven’t being paying attention to the fantasy table top roleplaying game scene (like all the cool kids do), then you may not know about Pathfinder. In short, Pathfinder is the game that challenged (and won) Dungeons & Dragons for top slot as most played fantasy RPG. This pretender to the throne won the crown by simply being comprehensive and widespread. It took the things that people loved about D&D and simply did them better.

These days, of course, D&D is making a plucky comeback with its latest edition, but that’s another story. Paizo, the people behind Pathfinder, excel at the thing makes tabletop gaming works: adventure! For a good game to work, the story ideas behind it need to be strong and engaging. The idea is to throw as many good ideas at the Dungeon Master in the hope that they can come up with something to entertain the players. Pathfinder’s latest entry, Horror Adventures, tackles one of the hardest things to do on the gaming table: scary stories.

Horror Adventures is a 254-page toolkit detailing rules, ideas and horrible things to creep out your players. From the get-go, it reminds the reader that Pathfinder isn’t designed as a horror game. The core goals still involve beating up monsters and looting them. Instead, what it does is provide lots of resources that will allow a Dungeon Master to give his players a little thrill of terror.

Much of rules are what you expect. The fear and sanity rules are pretty much the sort of thing you will have seen before in mainstream horror games. Where it excels is everything else; we have guidance on corruption, madness, lycanthropy, possession, and so on. Want your characters to slowly be tempted by demonic forces or alien hive minds? This has rules and guidance on how to play that sort of plot, with entertaining bonuses and penalties to bolt on to the character.

Horrorific diseases, cursed items and twisted magic are also detailed here. It’s set up in a pretty flexible way as well; if you want your game to go into a more Hammer Horror direction, then there’s plenty of magic and monsters to assist you. If you are more into slow and creepy drama, there are rules for that as well. The rules really excel when it comes to buckets of blood and gore, however.

This is very much a book for games masters; players looking for the next cool ability or ruling to make their hero extra interesting are looking in the wrong place – horror doesn’t lend itself to world-beating heroes, after all. If you’re a Pathfinder Dungeon Master looking for a tightly written, beautifully illustrated collection of ideas, however, this is pretty much perfect.

PATHFINDER ROLEPLAYING GAME: HORROR ADVENTURES / AUTHOR: JASON BULMAHN / PUBLISHER: PAIZO PUBLISHING INC. / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The Haynes Workshop Manuals have certainly moved along since this particular writer last bought one for my beloved old Ford Capri about thirty years ago. In their new incarnation, they cover the fictional vehicles of our beloved genre as well.

One of their latest offerings is the Owner’s Workshop Manual for what is inarguably the most famous weapon of mass destruction in all of science fiction filmdom – the DS-1 Orbital Battle Station, and to our relief, many Bothans did NOT die to bring us this information.

It’s a fascinating book for die-hard Star Wars fans, the authors have painstakingly researched their source material, encyclopaedia, spin-off books, technical manuals and so forth to bring together a wealth of cross referenced material which encompasses not only the original trilogy, but also the prequels and perhaps most importantly The Clone Wars.

Trivia seekers will enjoy the level of minutiae that graces these pages. From the Death Star’s inspiration, the spherical detail of the Trade Federation Battleships, to its early incarnation as The Eye of Palpatine – an armed, travelling weapons platform cunningly disguised as an asteroid, to the Torpedo Spheres and the early prototype.

The bulk of the book covers the DS-1 in loving detail, from highly detailed cutaway drawings, showing the inside of the core reactor, to the small thermal exhaust port, left unshielded, that was to prove the mechanical horror’s ultimate undoing. Details about crew quarters, recreation facilities where (incredibly) the Stormtroopers could hone their shooting skills, tractor beams, TIE fighter hangars, and details of each of the DS-1’s 24 sectors are all here, including schematics of the laser cannons that bristle the ship’s surface level, and a section on the superlaser that obliterated Alderaan.

Naturally, having built and lost a weapon this big and destructive – and lost it, the Empire would proceed to build bigger and better with the awe inspiring Death Star II, which is also given a section in the book. Apart from its size being bigger (a diameter of 160km, against the DS-1’s 120km) with an even bigger superlaser capable of recharging in minutes rather than hours, the main differences were that the thermal port vulnerability was taken care of and it was protected by a planetary shield generator from the moon of Endor.

Star Wars fans will love to examine this book in every minute detail – it’s the ultimate argument solver regarding the Death Star.

DEATH STAR MANUAL: DS-1 ORBITAL BATTLE STATION (OWNERS’ WORKSHOP MANUAL) / AUTHOR: RYDER WINDHAM / ARTIST: CHRIS REIFF, CHRIS TREVAS / PUBLISHER: J H HAYNES & CO LTD / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Sarah J. Maas‘ popular fantasy series Throne of Glass has an ever-growing cult following. The absurdly popular series is best described as ‘Cinderalla but with knives’. The first book (also called Throne of Glass) follows the journey of Celaena, a teenage assassin in a corrupted kingdom with a tyrannical ruler. The series itself expands into the realms of conspiracy and is pretty much a tight, action-based series of thrillers set in a fantasy world. Maas’ work is filled with detailed description and beauty. So it’s interesting that they’ve decided to produce a colouring book.

The Throne of Glass Colouring Book is a sequence of scenes plucked from the entire series, with a couple of paragraphs on one page and then an accompanying illustration on the opposite page. All of your favourite heroes are present, of course. Celaena  Manon, Elide, Lysandra, Arobynn and Aedion are all lovingly rendered in black and white. The drawing of Fleetfoot the dog is particularly adorable, and the accompanying text reminds the reader of the scene in which she first met the cute little puppy.

The scenes really don’t tell the story of Throne of Glass at all. It seems they’ve been selected solely on the criteria of what makes a good picture for colouring-in. The line drawings range from the simple to the incredibly detailed. Unusually for a colouring book, there is no one page filled with the same image over and over again. It’s not really a book for mindless doodling, it’s a book that inspires you to make art. (Colouring is art. If you don’t believe us, ask anyone who works in comics.) It’s a pretty thing even if you don’t scribble in the pages, but it would be a bit of a waste if you didn’t use it.

One of the marks of a good fiction is when you discover exactly how sharply and quickly it’s captured people’s imaginations. Art, song, fan-fiction are all ways that dedicated readers scoop up anything connected to a world. This is especially common with genre books, because well written genre tends to have strong central characters and powerful world building, and that’s the sort of thing that sparks imaginations. The Throne of Glass Colouring Book is not a mindfulness book; it’s not meant for relaxing doodling. Instead it’s intended to draw you into the world created by Sarah J. Maas through the medium of coloured pens and pencils. One for the fans of the series. But with the TV series on its way, those fans may very well be on the rise.

THE THRONE OF GLASS COLOURING BOOK / AUTOR: SARAH J. MAAS / ARTIST: YVONNE GILBERT, JOHN HOWE, CRAIG PHILLIPS / PUBLISHER: BLOOMSBURY CHILDREN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Edgar Rice Burrough’s character of Tarzan, the English lord brought up in the jungle and raised by apes, has spawned over fifty films and seven TV series, has captured the imagination of fans since the stories were first published in 1912. This oversized coffee table book takes a look at all the various incarnations of the loin-cloth wearing, muscle-bound hero.

From the very first cinematic adaptation – Tarzan of the Apes in 1918 – to the very latest (flop) blockbuster, there are enough glorious entries to satiate any fan. They are all, naturally, wonderfully illustrated with film posters and stills from the movies and shows, too. That first film sets the tone perfectly for the wealth of information that is included, from the deal that Burrough’s struck for the film rights to the fact that there are only five reels left in existence; less than half the original 130-minute running time. A genuinely sad fact, but something we hear all too often from the early cinema days. The silent days saw numerous entries to the Tarzan canon, but it would be the 1932 movie Tarzan the Ape Man that brought the world its first real iconic portrayal of the character, by Johnny Weissmuller. Appearing as Tarzan twelve times, many with the beautiful Maureen O’ Sullivan, Weissmuller would be synonymous with the tree-swinger, but there were other actors at the time that took to the role and attempted to make it his own. In the twelve-part serial Tarzan the Fearless (1933), Larry ‘Buster’ Crabbe – an Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer – stripped off his top and gave the infamous yodel-yell while fighting lions and crocodiles. Crabb, of course,  would become much more famous as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers in more cliff-hanging serials. Other pretenders to the ape throne included Herman Brix, and while Weissmuller is the best remembered, all the leads of each production are given minor profiles in this work.

It’s astonishing to read just how many versions of the ape-man there were, particularly from the ‘50s and ‘60s, the decade being topped by another very recognisable and iconic portrayal; this time, Ron Ely in the colour TV series that ran from 1966-68. Some of the fifty-seven episodes were stitched together into feature-length versions to play on the Saturday Morning cinema circuit, meaning Ely would become even more identifiable in the role. The actor, who would later become Doc Savage – Man of Bronze – also suffered numerous injuries while performing his own stunts, which although covered, are not gone into in too gory detail.

The seventies saw the interest in the lord of Greystoke drop off somewhat, there was the long-running cartoon, Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, brought to the screen by Filmation Studios. Although popular, it’s no longer in syndication. Which we could only wish was the case for John Derek’s 1981 attempt to sex up the story, Tarzan, The Ape Man. Only really conceived to showcase the ‘talents’ of his wife, Bo Derek, the film does boast a good cast including Richard Harris and John Phillip Law, but it completely forgettable, albeit a massive box office hit.

It’s curious to read about the TV series from the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, often forgotten in the UK, similarly, the WB 2003 ‘re-imagining’ that they hoped would rival Smallville’s success.  And it’s when engrossed in these kinds of pieces that one realises how the book could have done with being longer. By having such an exhaustive catalogue to cover, the 220+ pages just isn’t enough to allow for anything in-depth. You won’t feel like you’ve missed out on much, but there will be points where you’ll want to delve deeper.

The cinematic history is brought bang up-to-date with the recent Alexander Skarsgård/Margot Robbie flick The Legend of Tarzan and Netflix’s animated Tarzan and Jane.

Whether you have a fascination with the Tarzan character, a love of cinema history, or just like looking at pictures of well-built men with their tops off, this book is a recommended read.

TARZAN ON FILM / AUTHOR: SCOTT TRACY GRIFFIN / PUBLISHER:  TITAN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW