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Having recently finished the first book in the Empire of the East trilogy, I've moved over to reading a new book in the pulp adventure genre. During Christmas, I was up visiting in-laws and the weekend we were there, I took some time to peruse the local Books-A-Million. I ran across two books which caught my eye. Fury from the Tomb and The Beast of Nightfall Lodge by S.A. Sidor, both are pulp adventures in the style of Indiana Jones and/or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I started with Furry of the Tomb, so far, I'm finding it to be an entertaining read and a nice break from the fantasy genre.
Saqqara, Egypt, 1888, and in the booby-trapped tomb of an ancient sorcerer, Rom, a young Egyptologist, makes the discovery of a lifetime: five coffins and an eerie, oversized sarcophagus. But the expedition seems cursed, for after unearthing the mummies, all but Rom die horribly. He faithfully returns to America with his disturbing cargo, continuing by train to Los Angeles, home of his reclusive sponsor. When the train is hijacked by murderous banditos in the Arizona desert, who steal the mummies and flee over the border, Rom – with his benefactor’s rebellious daughter, an orphaned Chinese busboy, and a cold-blooded gunslinger – must ride into Mexico to bring the malevolent mummies back. If only mummies were their biggest problem…
When Egyptologist Rom Hardy receives a strange letter from his old friend, the bounty-hunting sniper Rex McTroy, he finds himself drawn into a chilling mystery. In the mountains of New Mexico, a bloodthirsty creature is on the loose, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. Now, a wealthy big game hunter has offered a staggering reward for its capture, and Rom’s patron – the headstrong and brilliant Evangeline Waterston – has signed the team up for the challenge. Awaiting them are blizzards, cold-blooded trappers, remorseless hunters, a mad doctor, wild animals and a monster so fearsome and terrifying, it must be a legend come to life.
“He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.” - Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
grodog wrote: ↑January 30th, 2021, 2:24 pm
Finished reading “Ill Met in Lankhmar” with Henry Thursday night, will start in on the _Swords Against Death_ stories next!
Allan.
Good stuff. I read through the Lankhmar stories a couple years back, really enjoyed them.
“He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.” - Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
Absolutely awesome read, I enjoyed this from start to finish. With all of the societal and political B.S. going around these days, it's refreshing to see publications like this. In my opinion, the concepts, ideas, and overall theme are spot on.
Some of my favorite quotes from the book:
There is a simple realization from which all personal improvement and growth emerges. This is the realization that we, individually, are responsible for everything in our lives, no matter the external circumstances. We don’t always control what happens to us. But we always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond. Whether we consciously recognize it or not, we are always responsible for our experiences. It’s impossible not to be. Choosing to not consciously interpret events in our lives is still an interpretation of the events of our lives.
~
You and everyone you know are going to be dead soon. And in the short amount of time between here and there, you have a limited amount of fucks to give. Very few, in fact. And if you go around giving a fuck about everything and everyone without conscious thought or choice—well, then you’re going to get fucked.
~
Our crisis is no longer material; it’s existential, it’s spiritual. We have so much fucking stuff and so many opportunities that we don’t even know what to give a fuck about anymore. People get addicted to feeling offended all the time because it gives them a high; being self-righteous and morally superior feels good. If you find yourself consistently, giving too many fucks about trivial shit that bothers you – chances are, you don’t have much going in your life to give a legitimate fuck about.
~
Essentially, we become more selective about the fucks we're willing to give. This is something called maturity. It's nice; you should try it sometime. Maturity is what happens when one learns to only give a fuck about what's truly fuck-worthy. As Bunk Moreland said to his partner Detective McNulty in THE WIRE: "That's what you get for giving a fuck when it wasn't your turn to give a fuck."
~
In my life, I have given a fuck about many people and many things. I have also not given a fuck about many people and many things. And like the road not taken, it was the fucks not given that made all the difference.
~
Because here’s the thing that’s wrong with all of the “How to Be Happy” shit that’s been shared eight million times on Facebook in the past few years—here’s what nobody realizes about all of this crap: The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience. This is a total mind-fuck. So I’ll give you a minute to unpretzel your brain and maybe read that again: Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience. It’s what the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as “the backwards law”—the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place.
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Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different.
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Decision-making based on emotional intuition, without the aid of reason to keep it in line, pretty much always sucks. You know who bases their entire lives on their emotions? Three-year-old kids. And dogs. You know what else three-year-olds and dogs do? Shit on the carpet.
~
Our culture today is obsessively focused on unrealistically positive expectations: Be happier. Be healthier. Be the best, better than the rest. Be smarter, faster, richer, sexier, more popular, more productive, more envied, and more admired. Be perfect and amazing and crap out twelve-karat-gold nuggets before breakfast each morning while kissing your selfie-ready spouse and two and a half kids goodbye. Then fly your helicopter to your wonderfully fulfilling job, where you spend your days doing incredibly meaningful work that’s likely to save the planet one day.
~
The ticket to emotional health, like that to physical health, comes from eating your veggies—that is, accepting the bland and mundane truths of life: truths such as “Your actions actually don’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things” and “The vast majority of your life will be boring and not noteworthy, and that’s okay.” This vegetable course will taste bad at first. Very bad. You will avoid accepting it. But once ingested, your body will wake up feeling more potent and more alive. After all, that constant pressure to be something amazing, to be the next big thing, will be lifted off your back. The stress and anxiety of always feeling inadequate and constantly needing to prove yourself will dissipate. And the knowledge and acceptance of your own mundane existence will actually free you to accomplish what you truly wish to accomplish, without judgment or lofty expectations.
“He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.” - Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
While hitting up the Free League website, related to the new One Ring 2e kickstarter, I realized they had published a couple HPL stories, differentiated from other publications because of some fantastic illustrations throughout. They have two currently published an davailable, The Call of Cthulhu, which I picked up, and At the Mountains of Madness, which I plan to get later on. The book is tall, much taller than standard books, sitting at roughly 14 inches. It's a nice addition to any Mythos collection, imo, and I look forward to getting AtMoM to go along with this one.
“He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.” - Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
Ancalagon wrote: ↑October 11th, 2020, 5:07 pm
Today I finished The Iron King, book 1 of The Accursed Kings series by Maurice Druon. It weighs in at 327 pages with historical notes expanding it to 340 pages.
The Accursed Kings (French: Les Rois maudits) is a series of historical novels by French author Maurice Druon about the French monarchy in the 14th century. Published between 1955 and 1977, the series has been adapted as a miniseries twice for television in France.
Set during the reigns of the last five kings of the direct Capetian dynasty and the first two kings of the House of Valois, the series begins as the French King Philip the Fair, already surrounded by scandal and intrigue, brings a curse upon his family when he persecutes the Knights Templar. The succession of monarchs that follows leads France and England to the Hundred Years' War.
American author George R. R. Martin called The Accursed Kings "the original game of thrones", citing Druon's novels as an inspiration for his own series, A Song of Ice and Fire.
I enjoyed The Iron King enough to order the next book in the series, The Strangled Queen.
Yesterday I finished The Strangled Queen, book 2 of The Accursed Kings series. It weighs in at 269 pages with historical notes expanding it to 280 pages.
From the back over of the book:
Philip IV is dead and his great kingdom is in disarray. It seems the fatal curse of the Templars is plaguing the royal house of France.
His son has been enthroned as Louis X; but with his disgraced wife Marguerite imprisoned in the Chateau Gaillard for her adultery, Louis can produce no heir with which to secure the succession. But neither can he marry again while she lives…
The web of scandal, murder and intrigue that once wove itself around the court of the Iron King continues to draw in his descendants, as the destruction of his dynasty continues apace.
So far so good. I'm enjoying the series and have already started on The Poisoned Crown.
A few weeks back I finished The Poisoned Crown, book 3 of The Accursed Kings series. It weighs in at 277 pages with historical notes expanding it to 294 pages. I can definitely see where GRRM got some inspiration for the Queen of Thorns in his Song of ice and Fire series.
From the back cover of the book:
After having his first wife murdered and his mistress exiled, the weak and impotent King Louis X of France becomes besotted with the lovely and pious Princess Clemence of Hungary of Hungary.
Having made her his new queen, and believing the succession assured, Louis foolishly embarks upon an ill-fated war against Flanders.
The kingdom needs an Iron King. But where his father, Philip IV, was strong, Louis is feeble. Surrounded by ruthlessly ambitious nobles, including Robert of Artois and his monstrous aunt, Lahaut, Louis will find himself a lamb amongst the wolves.
I'm hooked and will finish the rest of the series.
A couple of weeks back I finished The Royal Succession, book 4 of The Accursed Kings series. It weighs in at 308 pages with historical notes expanding it to 325 pages. I can absolutely see where GRRM got some inspiration for the Queen of Thorns in his Song of ice and Fire series!
From the back cover of the book:
Louis X is dead, poisoned, murdered, by the hand of Mahaut d'Artois. Her plan is simple - to clear the path to the throne for her son-in-law, Philippe. However, there is the small matter of Queen Clemence and her unborn child.
As the country is thrown into turmoil, Philippe of Poitiers must use any means necessary to save his country from anarchy. But how far is he willing to go to clear his path to the throne and become king in his own right?
“Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” - Carl Sagan
For a week or two I read the collection of stories compiled into Mad Amos Malone: The Complete Stories by Alan Dean Foster.
Strange things lurk up in the mountains and out in the plains and deserts of the West, but few are as unique as the giant mountain man named Amos Malone, who some call “Mad Amos”—though not to his face. Atop his unnatural steed, Worthless, Mad Amos is prepared to step into any fray and set things right, albeit in his own unusual way.
Now all of his uncanny exploits—including the brand-new story “Stuck”—are collected together for the first time. For this special edition, Alan Dean Foster has also penned original introductions to the series and to each individual adventure.
The initial stories were pretty good, I enjoyed reading them and seeing how Amos managed to thwart each of the various antagonists he encountered, both human and other. Unfortunately though, by the time I got towards the end of the series I found them to just be somewhat silly and illogical, even by the standards of the protagonist and his mount, whom already house a fair amount of fantastic and logic-bending elements. Overall though, the character concept is a great one and I enjoyed many of the stories up to this point. So, I gave up reading further and moved on to a new book.
Back in the 90s, there was a movie I watched called The Relic, some of you may remember it.
The movie was based on a novel, the first in a series (Pendergast series), called Relic, written by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.
Just days before a massive exhibition opens at the popular New York Museum of Natural History, visitors are being savagely murdered in the museum's dark hallways and secret rooms. Autopsies indicate that the killer cannot be human...
But the museum's directors plan to go ahead with a big bash to celebrate the new exhibition, in spite of the murders.
Museum researcher Margo Green must find out who--or what--is doing the killing. But can she do it in time to stop the massacre?
I enjoyed the movie and still consider it one of my overall favorites from that era, having watched it again while revisiting old 1990s flicks. After, I did some digging into the book series, along with other novels from the authors and since dropping Amos Malone, have jumped into Book One from the Nora Kelly series, called Old Bones. The premise is very intriguing and based on Relic, I'm curious to see where the authors take the story. I have my suspicions, but will wait and see how close or far off I am from the actual plot.
Nora Kelly, a young curator at the Santa Fe Institute of Archaeology, is approached by historian Clive Benton with a once-in-a-lifetime proposal: to lead a team in search of the so-called "Lost Camp" of the tragic Donner Party. This was a group of pioneers who earned a terrible place in American history when they became snow-bound in the California mountains in 1847, their fate unknown until the first skeletonized survivors stumbled out of the wilderness, raving about starvation, murder-and cannibalism.
Benton tells Kelly he has stumbled upon an amazing find: the long-sought diary of one of the victims, which has an enigmatic description of the Lost Camp. Nora agrees to lead an expedition to locate and excavate it-to reveal its long-buried secrets.
Once in the mountains, however, they learn that discovering the camp is only the first step in a mounting journey of fear. For as they uncover old bones, they expose the real truth of what happened, one that is far more shocking and bizarre than mere cannibalism. And when those ancient horrors lead to present-day violence on a grand scale, rookie FBI agent Corrie Swanson is assigned the case...only to find that her first investigation might very well be her last.
“He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.” - Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
I mentioned a while back that I was reading books in Pratchett's Discworld series. Today I ran across a great short film following the adventures of Cohen the Barbarian, one of the the last and greatest of the barbarian heroes.
“He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.” - Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
Not about a specific book, but this video talks about changes from the style of cover art in the horror genre, from decades ago to modern horror books and how the aesthetics have changed in a way that detracts from what horror should be. I've seen this sort of thing in other genres too.
“He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.” - Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
