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Biblioholic Review: Tier One Wild

25 Jan

Tier-One-Wild-Fury-DaltonThe field of adventure and military fiction is pretty clogged these days. Lots of armchair warriors or those with dubious “snake eating” creds fill the physical and virtual bookshelves of popular fiction. There are a handful of bonafide fighters turned novelists out there and Dalton Fury is one of them.

Fury, a pen name, is a former officer in the elite “Delta Force” and authored an early non-fiction take on the efforts to find and kill Osama Bin Laden. After that book Fury branched out and created a fictional, battered and outsider Delta operator in Kolt Raynor. Raynor appeared in Black Site, Fury’s inaugural action fiction tale that was fast paced and enjoyable. Fury follows-up Black Site with a new Raynor adventure, Tier One Wild.

Raynor, once an outcast from the special operations mainstream, has now been re-qualified and is welcomed back to the world of Delta in an adventure story that hopscotches around the globe hitting every conceivable hotspot. The story opens with audacious action as Raynor and his small team of shooters literally descend from the night sky to assault a hijacked jetliner. Thing is, Fury doesn’t make it a simple land, creep and linear assault. Nope, the adventure quotient immediately amps up as the jet starts to take off and the Raynor team lands ON the accelerating aircraft. What follows is a quick, brutal action of close quarters battle.

From there, Tier One Wild bounces from India, to the United States, Libya, Egypt and Yemen. Surface to air missiles are on the loose and Raynor’s team needs to stay one step ahead of the terrorist band, led by an American ex-pat turned radical. Ultimately, the trail takes bullet spewing twists and turns to a conclusion where Raynor must take action by his own hand.

The technical details, gear and guns are punctuation to a kinetic story. The “bad guy” Abu al-Amriki appears as a mad, calculating master mind in Black Site and his story arc effectively propels forward into Tier One Wild without getting bogged down in typical xenophobic characterizations.

As military thrillers go, Tier One Wild has a clear story, clear characters and smooth, rapid pacing. If you’re a fan of the genre, you’ve probably already picked up Fury’s work. If on the fence about military adventure fiction, this book is a good entree to the crowded field.

Tier One Wild by Dalton Fury was purchased for review by the Boston Book Bums

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Biblioholic Review: Jason Dark- Ghost Hunter: Demon’s Night

18 Oct

As readers on the edge of the digital age, we’ve felt that it may be time for the writers of novellas, short stories or dime novels to find new commercial success in bits and bytes. We’ve been introduced to one such writer, Guido Henkel author of the Jason Dark novella series.

The Dark series, about a paranormal investigator in Victorian England, runs ten installments and we’re just catching up on these snippets of action adventure. We have leaped into this monster chasing, demon battling story with Volume One, Demon’s Night.

Henkel take particular glee in setting up a scene, building the mood, ambience and richness of backgrounds. His London is one of punches of detail and runaway action.

The phantasmic cloud creeping through the alleys and docks of London in Demon’s Night evoke those primitive but supremely scary horror movies of the silent-era. The glowing, seeping evil haunts the story, setting a richness in tone beyond its minimal size. Disembodied eyes, unblinking, peering out from the mist is the kind of imagery that makes gothic pulp work. And Henkel does it well in Demon’s Night.

Deaths, mysterious and desiccating, reach out of the night and launch our hero into the fray. Henkel doesn’t mess around with too much extraneous. It’s about getting to the meat of the story, eat it fast or it’ll spoil.

Dark is a sort of quirky investigator, in the shape of Holmes or more appropriately Thomas Carnacki, seeking out occult danger wherever it rears its head. He studies the papers, watching for those odd keywords that suggest something other than common murder or property crime. Henkel’s Dark is brave, no-nonsense, dark and mysterious.

Henkel has a clean, quick writing style, uncomplicated and unpretentious. And Demon’s Night, like the serials of old, sets a break-neck pace from beginning to end.

As we race toward Halloween, we think that taking a chance on Jason Dark for some bites of horror adventure will pay off.

Jason Dark- Ghost Hunter: Demon’s Night was received free for review by Boston Book Bums

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Biblioholic Review: A Princess of Mars

23 Aug

We are knee deep in the world of pulp fiction these days. There is something about the snap, immediacy and imagination of the early pioneers of  the genre. And with the first glimpse of the celluloid John Carter, in part a big-screen adaptation of A Princess of Mars, we revisited the first novel in the Barsoom series. Read A Princess of Mars and you will see first voice echoed by several generations of science fiction in literature and movies.

A Princess of Mars is two-fisted action, with magnificent world building and sweeping story arcs that make it a truly great antecedent in the world of science fiction.

John Carter is a Confederate soldier introduced to the reader by his nephew, Edgar Rice Burroughs. Yes, you see, Burroughs inserts himself into the fiction as the man who uncovers his uncle’s secret and fantastic life as a soldier, transported from Arizona to the surface of Mars in the blink of an eye.

What makes A Princess of Mars so interesting that instead of following what is a now common, oh woe is me path of confused introspection and doubting one’s sanity. Nope, a true adventurer Carter shakes off the inter-planetary bewilderment and begins a sword swinging journey over the surface of the Red Planet.

He is captured by the Thark race, the looming Martians of green skin and four arms, fights them and stands beside them in battle, he learns their history, become telepathic and sees the broadness of their beloved Barsoom, Mars.

Burroughs mastery at introducing fantastic concepts quickly and clearly is something many genre story tellers lack. Simplicity in description, economy in detail, drop you into the world of a 1912 reader where fantastic simplicity made a story sing. No ponderous or meticulous construction. Just towering Tharks, powerful weapons wielded in epic battles, Martians astride odd galloping beasts, vicious great white apes; and of course Deja Thoris.

Deja Thoris is the beautiful, strong willed and much desired Princess of Helium. Of course when Thoris is captured by the Thark, Carter falls for her and does everything to get her back to her home. And of course, they fall in love.

Skirmishes, chases, breaks for freedom and all out battles sweep the story of A Princess of Mars from one chapter to another.

It is non-stop. It is a thrilling piece of genre fiction that shows no weathering or cobwebs of age. Don’t think too hard folks, it is simple adventure at its earliest and best.

A Princess of Mars by Edgard Rice Burroughs was received for free by the Boston Book Bums

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All Butt Kicking Team: Literary Dirty Dozen

20 Jul

In the annals of film, it’s believed that Akira Kurosawa essentially invented the ‘team’ film. Assembling crooks, criminals, soldiers or adventurers to fight for a common cause. Sure, military units and bands of merry men had been featured in film and literature, but different characters assembled for a special purpose had never really been done.

We bring up the amazing Kurosawa film because we’ve decided to assemble our own All Butt Kicking Team. Importantly, every character has a separate role to fill. Sure there is a lot of muscle to be flexed. Yet we need grit, determination and leadership, too.

Most important, these characters possess no magic or supernatural skills. It’s old fashioned brains and/or brawn.

And here is reveille, our All Butt Kicking Team, the Literary Dirty Dozen!

John Carter: Throw a man into a completely foreign environment, alien to his home, he will either turtle or charge on. Carter, from the Barsoom series created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is transported from Earth to Mars like a lightning bolt and he improvises, adapts and overcomes. He is unshakable and passionate for a cause he believes in, but no rogue.

El Borak: He is just one tough S.O.B. Hard as a coffin nail, El Borak is a creation of Robert E. Howard, an American adventurer, mercenary and gunfighter who plied his trade in the Middle East and Central Asia. When you absolutely need something destroyed, El Borak is your man.

Daniel Dravot & Peachy Carnahan: Friends to the end, Dravot and Carnahan from Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King are thieving action heroes. Yes they have a wee bad streak. They are a product of their age, needing to get in while gettin’s good, while remaining disciplined to the team. This duo will get along well with our Literary Dirty Dozen scrounger, Robinson Crusoe (see below.)

Richard Sharpe: Every C.O. needs a fighting N.C.O. and Sharpe, created by Bernard Cornwell, is the best example of moral leader and fighter. As sergeants say today, don’t call me sir, I work for a living. Needing to be father figure, caretaker and disciplinarian, Sharpe easily makes our Literary Dirty Dozen.

Beau Geste: Fictional French Foreign Legionaire from P.C. Wren is a good soldier, brave and adventurous. Not every team can be stuffed with splashy personalities, so Geste serves a solid member of the rank and file.

Uncas: We had to put a character from The Last of the Mohicans on our Literary Dirty Dozen list, but not the one you would think. Hawkeye gets all the pub, but it’s Uncas that has the right balance of open mindedness, inquisitiveness and martial skill.

Aramis, Athos & Porthos: Imagine the Hansen Brothers from Slapshot, a group within a group, a skilled bezerker trio that can be unleashed upon an enemy or task without worry. You all know the prowess of the Three Musketeers, so they fit our butt kicking team nicely.

Robinson Crusoe: Every unit needs a ‘master scrounger’ someone who can ferret out, steal or borrow everything you need. And in Daniel Dafoe’s creation, you have a man that would fit into the A-Team with his resourcefulness.

Capt. Jack Aubrey: And every team needs a leader, that is why we chose Capt. Jack Aubrey. Patrick O’Brien’s leader is brave, resourceful, stubborn and beloved by his men. One part authoritarian, another part intuitive team mate, Aubrey is the best man to keep this motley crew together.

And the man that assembled this Literary Dirty Dozen? Odyssesus. ‘Nuff said.

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Biblioholic Review: Black Hand Gang

19 Jul

In recent years there has been a low simmer when it comes to reviving pulp-style fiction. It roared back mainly in crime fiction, with some minor percolation in science fiction. Well, with Pat Kelleher’s Black Hand Gang, the occult science fiction genre explodes like a trench mortar over Passchendaele.

Part of the No Man’s World series, Black Hand Gang is the story of the First World War and the battles of the Somme. We are quickly introduced to the officers and enlisted men of the 13th Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers, a British outfit of experienced soldiers, idealist recruits, disconnected officers and even a mysterious ‘practitioner.’

Black Hand Gang builds credibility with impeccable First World War scenes of life in the trenches and the antiquated, slaughterous method of attrition warfare waged by both sides. But in the great pulp tradition, as the 13th advances on the German trench lines, a strange cloud envelopes them. Not poison gas, not chlorine or Mustard gas hurled by the Kaiser’s forces. No, this is something entirely. Something otherworldly. The men regain consciousness to find their battle blasted piece of mud and barbed wire plucked up and transported to a lush alien world.

The shock is immediate. And yes, some struggle with this mind bending reality. But, what makes the men and unit snap into logical shape is the pin sharp regimentation and stiff upper lip that British military men are known for. No sitting around whimpering or whining. These men are refocused on their task- survive this world and try to figure out if there is a way home. It works brilliantly.

Dealing with several hundred men, with specific focus on a few platoons, means that there are a bulging handful of characters to keep track of. Kelleher creates sharp, postage stamp sized portraits of each man, slightly different than the next to make them stand out and cohese as a unit. Early on Kelleher shows his hand with an evil character in British uniform, setting the occult stage for the rest of the book. A smart move, it allows that supernatural spectre to hang over the coming scenes, waiting for the alien mayhem to start.

Kelleher’s research on British military equipment, tactics & slang are superb! His grasp of the miseries of trench warfare are expertly and unwaveringly portrayed. Remove the supernatural and science fiction elements of Black Hand Gang and you would have a Tier 1 piece of military historical fiction.

Possessing all the attributes of great pulp fiction, but with a 21st century edge, Black Hand Gang is the kind of adventure book we need more of. And luckily, it is just a first in a series of No Man’s World adventures that are sure to bring back rock-em sock-em writing to the masses. Don’t hesitate to grab a copy of Black Hand Gang!

Black Hand Gang by Pat Kelleher was received for free for review by Boston Book Bums

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Biblioholic Review: The Map of Time

28 Jun

There is something about Spanish authors translated to English. We’re not sure if there is a freshness to their concepts, or a vivacity to their characters, but hands down when it comes to overlooked, genre fiction the Spanish are the best in particular Julia Navarro and Matilde Asensi, and now Felix J. Palma, author of The Map of Time.

The Map of Time on the face of it has all the hallmarks of steampunk popular fiction, Victorian-esque fanciful cover, jacket copy with nods to strange technology and real-life 19th century characters.

But the moment we cracked the spine on this Spanish-translated import were taken aback by its construction, it’s imagination and defiance of modern expectation for speculative fiction.

Broken down into three parts, Palma’s background as short story maestro pays off well with each section of The Map of Time rivetingly built to stand on its own. Yet the talented Spaniard somehow knit together characters from all over the fictional map, from real figures like H.G. Wells and Jack the Ripper. To the completely fictional like a man tormented by the murder of his beloved or an unscrupulous Victorian era showman that would give P.T. Barnum a run for his money, The Map of Time weaves them all together in an emotionally effective story.

The Map of Time is all about time travel, real or imagined and the lengths you will go to manipulate time in the name of love. Yes, The Map of Time is also about love. There is a long thread of passion and desire that runs through this novel. Thankfully Palma’s grasp of true literary passion, parts raw sexual attraction and intellectual sensuality, add some nice punctuations to a story that could have been one long mystery of out time.

This is a complex story, a genre mental wrestling match best gobbled up in lengthy sittings. This book will leave you scratching your head questioning ‘fact from fiction’ and whether time is mailable or immutable. Not bad for a piece of fiction that many would overlook.

If you are looking for shallow, self-congratulatory steampunk, you’ll hate this book. Instead, The Map of Time is Victorian speculative fiction with intelligence and a heart beat that thumps loudly for love.

For grown-ups, The Map of Time is a superb mash-up of  fairy tales and modern genre fiction.

The Map of Time by Felix Palma was received for free by the Boston Book Bums

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B3 Week In Review

11 Jun

Monday: In preparation for our review of Robopocalypse we kick off the week with a look at some historic and overlooked robotic characters from literature. Also, to start the week well informed, we gather news for a Bookish Intelligence Report.

Tuesday: In the tradition of science fiction genre romps like World War Z comes Robopocalypse. We tackle the work by Daniel Wilson that imagines the rise of the machines and mankind’s fight back.

Wednesday: News from around the world is collected to better inform in our regular Bookish Intelligence Report. Also, ahead of tomorrow’s review, we chat with author and former Massachusetts resident Arthur Wooten about his newest work, Birthday Pie.

Thursday: Want to know what we think of Birthday Pie, a book that makes you a fly on the wall of a family in the midst of serious and comedic life issues.

Friday: Always some news happening around the bookish world, and we do our due diligence to collect fresh happenings in a BIR. Also, we want to send you off to weekend gatherings with a new bookish question- What do libraries mean to you?

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Biblioholic Review: Robopocalypse

7 Jun

Daniel H. Wilson’s Robopocalypse is being called by some the World War Z of summer 2011, a science fiction phenomena that could cross over from sci-fi genre fans to the beach reads of a broader reading public.

The comparisons are more than just about marketing buzz, Robopocalypse is World War Z with robots, not zombies. And that is not a bad thing, it’s a structural thing. Just an honest assessment of a book that chronicles the rapid homicidal rise of robots and humanity’s fight back, told in the first person. And like the zombie juggernaut of 2006, Robopocalypse delivers all levels of 21st century pulp.

Wilson has flashes of chilling brilliance amid some familiar science fiction tropes. The snapshots of data, human experiences of terror in the face of unstoppable automaton destruction, crackle with energy and propel the decimation forward.

There are scenes were your skin crawls, most in the early dialogue of the sentient architect of doom Archos 14. That chill is similar to the hyper-intellectual self-aware homicidal thoughts from Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Robopocalyse is not as sprawling as you would think, but a compactly constructed and relatively short chronology of  ‘salvaged’ narratives. Characters include a little girl who will become an oracle hybrid for humanity and a reluctant civilian turned continental conquering soldier, among others.

The two stand-out characters of Robopocalypse are a Japanese man, Takeo Nomura, who becomes an almost prophetic uniting shepherd of robots and humans. And there is a U.S. soldier, Specialist Paul Blanton, serving in Afghanistan who witnesses the start of the robot uprising though to its conclusion.

Wilson’s sketch of a late war Blanton reconnaissance mission to a mountainous Afghan lake concludes with a breathtakingly awesome science fiction vision. The scene had a cinematic sweep and awe. We could have read an entire book of Blanton’s accounts in Afghanistan alone!

Robopocalypse owes DNA to 2001: A Space Odessey, the Terminator movie franchise, Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein and any number of ground breaking Japanese manga author/artists like Shirow Masamune and Otomo Katsuhiro.

Robopocalypse stands on the shoulders of generations of sci-fi icons, successfully nurturing the formula, tweaking here and adding there to become a fun, gun blasting, metal crunching man versus machine extravaganza.

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson was received for free by Boston Book Bums

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Biblioholic Review: Blood Prophecy

3 Mar

Urban paranormal is the current home to most vampire fiction. And to some readers of more traditional horror fiction there is a distinct lack of innovation in the field. Well, if you are looking for something that has more action, history and less romantic pining, then Blood Prophecy is a book that snaps with the power of pulp bear trap.

Penned by comic book writer and novelist Stefan Petrucha, Blood Prophecy is the story of Puritan farmer Jeremiah Fall. The immediate immersion into a rustic 1644 Massachusetts smartly sets the tone for the historical paranormal of Blood Prophecy. Fall is a Puritan hand on a family farm when a demon is released from a gnarled heap of organic matter.

In shocking slaps, Petrucha unravels the pious world of Fall, killing him and raising him again, setting him on a course to find a solution for his problem of blood lust immortality. He wanders the world and ends up in Egypt, at a time of war and discovers a tablet of fame that could possibly set him free.

We were reminded some of Robert E. Howard, specifically the Puritan demon hunter Solomon Kane, in the character of the vampiric Fall. Our lead may seem emotionally bound, one dimensional, but consider he is just minutes into an eternal life. So Fall is facing a potentially tormented forever and his world is a never ending battle between piety, intellect and avarice. His is restrained, not shallow.

A hard road to hoe without being tedious, unless exceptionally skilled as a writer, is filling in 150 years of vampire-soldier of fortune life. Petrucha does that smartly, sort of backing into Fall’s years of travel and learning. He doesn’t go in the front door, overloading reader with Fall’s years of wandering. Instead he drops you into the sands of Egypt, amidst the Napoleonic wars, carefully spilling the beans about Fall’s previous 15 decades of life.

Blood Prophecy introduces supporting characters, foils and foes at the right moment.  Each lingers just long enough to build familiarity or compassion, disdain or lust. Pertucha pushes and pulls them in an out of the storyline expertly, leading to the climax of paranormal violence.

We won’t delve into too much detail, but there are ghoulish players running along side Fall’s life path, like the grotesque and powerful Skog, that provide the right evil until or when the ultimate evil is unleashed upon the world.

Petrucha also has a solid grasp of creation myths and apocryphal variations, intertwining accepted dogma with his own faiths of imagination; from the well spring of humanity to Bretonian legends.

Blood Prophecy is the fun historical paranormal adventure we love and find so little of today. Sure there are well troped series and epic paranormal thrillers out there, but we pine for stories of pistols, rapiers, fangs and brains. And Blood Prophecy is one such book.

Blood Prophecy by Stefan Petrucha was received for free by the Boston Book Bums

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Biblioholic Review: Red Station

16 Dec

Adrian Magson’s Red Station is a throw back thriller. There are no gadgets (real or far fetched) to create or solve problems. No armchair politics that push the scribe’s leanings. No ridiculous fetes of physical skill. Nothing to distract the reader. You are absorbed in a plot firmly rooted in the real world, with a thriller tint.

Red Station is the story of MI-5 operative and former soldier, Harry Tate. The officer of domestic intelligence is put at the head of a drug bust that goes awry right before his eyes. Put on a  fast track to nowhere to avoid public fallout, Tate is shipped off to a British intelligence outpost known as Red Station. The station is on the far-flung edge of 10 Downing Street interest, the Caucuses, more specifically the republic of Georgia.

This outpost, sort of like the spook equivalent of the Island of Misfit Toys, is forgotten and unimportant to British foreign policy. That is until Tate arrives. Shortly after the officer lands in Georgia, the nation rushes towards the real war with Russia over the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008.

With this real world drama as a backdrop, Tate works his ways through a new mundane and relatively useless way of life, until war clouds start to gather. Suddenly he finds himself useful, as well as a target. From  that point on the thriller kicks into gear and moves with purpose.

British thrillers, especially when geared towards espionage and military-philes, transcend their ham fisted American cousins on several front. British thrillers, like the one crafted by Magson, are about detail in the right dose. They have an authentic workman quality, with expert subtle eye for detail and tradecraft, unlike the often festishized, laboriously gear-centric/tech-hungry or self-congratulatory U.S. thrillers.

And while politics are worn on the sleeve of most domestic thriller scribes, Red Station is about one man, on the ground and the world around him, not about the author pushing his political beliefs through self-righteous, demagogue monologues.

Also Magson has you following Tate’s every move with anticipation, not with lame gimmickry, but from genuine, rock solid plotting, pacing and character. In one scene, where Tate (this being his first book in a series) questions a figure from his past, the two converse in a realistic way about an incident that we never read, but feels like we know.

Magson does an excellent job of giving Georgia those little touches of authenticity, weaving in spies, soldiers and killers with just the right amount of detail, but not bogging down either the country or its inhabitant with over-characterization.

Red Station, hands down, is the best espionage thriller we’ve read in a long time. Mr. Magson, you have some new fans in these Boston Book Bums.

Red Station by Adrian Magson was purchased by the Boston Book Bums

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