Shadrach in the Furnace (Bison Frontiers of Imagination) Review

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Shadrach in the Furnace (Bison Frontiers of Imagination) ReviewThis is really a review of both volumes One and Two, which belong together, although each one is long enough that a single book would be unwieldy.
There are five novellas collected here, three in the first volume and two in the second, that make up the episodic story of Kirth Gerson, who has devoted his life to revenge on the five Demon Princes, who are galactic super-criminals, for a massacre they all cooperated on when he was a child that left him bereft of family, friends, and home. Since then they have all pursued their imaginative evils independently.
Gerson was raised by his grandfather to be a revenge machine. He has perfected the arts of killing in all their variety, and cultivates a bland and harmless appearance so as to pursue, undetected and undeterred, the deaths of these (mostly) men.
But they will not succumb easily. Gerson's greatest weapon is that these enormously clever and ruthless criminals are not aware of him, or of his mission. They are, however, preternaturally vigilant (as befits those extravagantly beyond the law), masters of disguise and misdirection, and playful in ghastly and terrifying ways. They assume they have enemies, and each time Kirth Gerson draws near his quarry the roles of hunter and hunted become less clear.
The premise is gripping, the prose luxuriant and witty, and the action a tasteful mixture of violence and elegant repartee. Vance's inventiveness never flags, and he clearly enjoys the implausible colorful worlds he constructs with so much attention to the details of diet, costume, architecture, and custom. And what could be more appealing than innocence avenged, and dangerous evil decisively defeated?
These stories appeared in the old Galaxy magazine (I think!) back in the sixties, over a period of years. I remember getting hold of new ones in college after having gotten hooked by the first two stories years earlier. So, just as it took Kirth Gerson a long time to fully effect his revenge, it was a long time before we readers had his whole story in hand. But this two-volume collection replaces that years-long suspense with more-or-less instant gratification. The stories are long, but they are all there, in the proper order. It would be cruel indeed to give volume One as a gift without supplying volume Two as well. But Vance's prose is a rich diet, and it's likely that after these books a reader will be ready for some leaner fare for quite some time.Shadrach in the Furnace (Bison Frontiers of Imagination) OverviewIn the twenty-first century, a battered world is ruled by a crafty old tyrant, Genghis II Mao IV Khan. The Khan is ninety-three years old, his life systems sustained by the skill of Mordecai Shadrach, a brilliant young surgeon whose chief function is to replace the Khan's worn-out organs. Within the vast tower-complex, the most advanced equipment is dedicated to three top-priority projects, each designed to keep the Khan immortal. Most sinister of these is Project Avatar, by which the Khan's mind and persona are to be transferred to a younger body.

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As Far As Jistabout Review

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As Far As Jistabout ReviewThis book is a change of pace from your average genre's and definately has it's moments of fun. There are a couple points where you find yourself chuckling out loud which is always a good thing. The characters are eccentric and the scenery is depicted well and doesn't beat you over the head like Stephen King or China Melville will for 3 pages until you have to debate whether or not to continue reading after you wipe the blood from your ears.
The book is fast paced as far as changing up the immediate environments and situations the four main charactars get involved in. The Plot is a little lacking though. Actually, it's really not there at all. It's not exactly a deep or have a lot of twists or involving side stories. It's more of a sequence of light-hearted events that take place with some wierd characters in-line with the idea that they have to kill one man. "Hey blokes, lets go to someplace random and do something silly...and oh yeah...we have to kill a guy eventually, what?"
As Far As Jistabout OverviewInto the domain of good King Leonard VIII of England comes the Blond Beast. They say he's from another England, one which is ruled by a Queen Elizabeth II. Unbelievable. Anyway, this Lester Biddiscombe, the Blond Beast, is a 'man among men' and quick to lash out. Over in Leonard's domain he soon gets himself a couple of chicks. He's there with two friends to help Lino Franter find Farris Cable, and when they get their hands on him, Lino will kill him. Why? To stop him and similar vermin infiltrating the domain of Queen Elizabeth II.(305 print pages.)

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War of the Gods Review

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War of the Gods ReviewThe text begins interestingly enough, albeit somewhat ponderously, as Poul Anderson, one of the greats of Science Fiction & Fantasy, essays once more to travel the mist-shrouded roads of Faery. Writing at least since the fifties (I enjoyed his stuff going back to the sixties), Anderson's "voice" seems to have mellowed and subtly altered with the passing of the years. Never one of the most moving or most profound of tale spinners, he was always, nevertheless, the consummate storyteller. Still this present tale lacks the energy and vitality of his earlier saga-like excursions. While The Broken Sword leaped with life and blood and darkness and Hrolf Kraki's Saga (basically a translation of a legendary Danish-Norse tale, with some additions by the author to make it more contemporary) charged onward from episode to episode until crashing mightily on the rocks of it's own climactic shore, this new tale seems oddly stilted and self-conscious. The language does not pour forth, carrying the reader over the unsure ground of fantasy, as Anderson was wont to do in former days, and the characters he has given us here seem paler than in the past -- and not nearly as interesting as their predecessors were. The protagonist, Hadding the Dane-King, for instance, moves sluggishly from one odd episode to another, always winning his battles and defeating his foes, never seeming to be in any serious danger at all, a circumstance which ultimately seems to tell on him as much as it does on us. And the people around him, as well as his enemies, never seem to be quite worthy of the attention he lavishes on them. Fostered by giants of old Norse legend and lover to his own foster mother (or sister) who adopts human form to be with him, guided by a mysterious one-eyed "wanderer", Hadding ought to be more multi-faceted than the invincible, noble hero we are given. Through much of this tale only the relatively easy-read prose (despite the incorporation of archaic words and forms to set the mood) and the intrinsically promising subject-matter (for those of us who like the Norse thing) keeps you reading. Written stolidly and with far more description than one is likely to find in the real Icelandic and Norse stuff, the tale yet retains the sleepy, dream-like presentation of events and images which is so characteristic of this material in its original form -- a form in which giants are never quite giants as we understand them (for they seem larger or smaller depending on their surroundings) and gods walk about like magicians. Nevertheless, Anderson has here created a tale which, surprisingly and for all its apparent faults, does stand up -- and admirably so, in the end. It is a story of sadness and, finally, understanding -- sketched against a backdrop of adventure and fighting and killing. The last part of the book redeems the slowness and awkward-seeming "forced" prose that went before as the truth of the tale is relentlessly brought home -- how a single life may be more than its appearance alone and how the worlds of fantasy and reality may intersect afterall. It's just a story, Anderson says in his afterword and, indeed, it is that -- but a story which reached me in a largely unexpected way. It takes an historical legend from much earlier times and revives it in a manner which does honor to the source material from which it is drawn while yet placing it in a perspective we moderns can grasp. As The Broken Sword was, no doubt, a young man's breathless and headlong tale (Anderson himself once suggested this in a foreword he'd written somewhat later to that book), so this one is the work of another writer entirely -- one who has lived his life and seen the fullness of it and its inevitable denouement. This one goes deeper than it seemed at the first. And redeems itself, and all of us, for that.
Stuart W. Mirsky
Author of The King of Vinland's SagaWar of the Gods Overview

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