A blog devoted to the Tommy Thunder and The Aether Age pulp fiction series. It's Dieselpunk fiction at its pulpiest with two-fisted brawls, biplane dogfights, mysterious safaris, Prohibition gin-running and swanky art-deco speakeasy hopping as far as the eye can see.
***Pulp Warning*** All my e-reading is in the vein of e-pulp, so all reviews are pulp relative. Reader beware :) ***Pulp Warning***
Overall: 4 stars (Recommend)
The Pirates of Xonira is a Bond style romp through a modern world setting which makes a refreshing change for pulp. Dillon is great, the action non-stop and the supporting cast fantastic but it's missing that certain something that would make it 5 stars.
Pacing and Action: 4 stars.
One thing about a modern setting for pulp is that there's plenty more toys to play with and Dillon has a garage full of them. Motorbikes, four-wheel drives, drone gunships and submarines are all part of the fun and shenanigans ensue.
The only let down would be the way the story falls into some old Bond cliches with slabs of exposition while characters interrogate each other or the villain explains his evil scheme. It slows things down a little and can feel a little clunky.
Pulp Concept: 4 stars.
A modern setting for non-superhero pulp seems to be a fairly rare occurence but it shouldn't be. The Dillon series is a good exception with a clear Bond influence while putting its own spin on the ideas. It blends Bond with more fantastic elements that provoke Dillon's various high-tech adventures, usually dragging him all over the world in order to make things right. It's a good conept that is well used in this latest installment.
Character development: 4 stars.
This is quite good, helped by the fact that all of the characters are unique with their own motivations and character tics. Over the course of the story we good a very good sense of who is what and why, Dillon is a great character that plays with the Bond cliche by being not very Bond in many different ways and the supporting cast also have histories and stories of their own. Not sure if anyone changes over the course of the narrative but being well-rounded to begin with means that you don't notice.
Production: 3.5 stars.
There were some spelling mistakes and missed words that should have been picked up in editting and the cover is a bit flat and lifeless. But the price is good which means you get plenty of pulp for your buck.
Series Potential: 4 stars.
Three or four stories in I think the series potential has been proven. The pattern has been set and references to Dillon's wider world are always being dropped in to flesh out the world and his character. Plenty of material to mine in the future and the author is no doubt thinking in that vein.
Wrap Up.
Good, fun, Bond-style pulp romp with a great character. Will be interesting to see what happens next in the world of Dillon.
*Pulp Warning* All my e-reading skews towards e-pulp. So do my reviews. Reader beware :) *Pulp Warning*
Overall: 4 stars (Recommended)
The first book in the Sentinels series is everything it claims to be: old school comic book storytelling but in this old school prose stuff. And it's a lot of fun. A must read for old school comic readers and a lot of fun for anyone who likes to read about people in figure-hugging costumes punching robe-clad people who like to plot the end of the world.
Pacing and Action: 4 stars.
Fight scenes, baby. That's what you'll get. And people who can fly and/or teleport. That generally makes for a fast, action packed story.
Seriously though, this is comic book storytelling so there's absolutely no let up to the fights. If that's your thing then this is your thing.
The writing also has a good sense of humour. Very funny. There's a scene with an errant marsupial that comes to mind. Hi-larious for its 'what the...' value. And down right stereotypical (I should know).
Pulp Concept: 5 stars.
Can't get a pulpier concept than 'superheroes'. If you can, I want to know about it.
I suppose there's a slight chance that old-school fanboys may get agro about the thin veneer of DC or Marvel-iness that wafts around each of the characters but the rest of us geeks will get a kick out of a world in which Darkseid (with an Arnold-esque '6th Day' predicament) is desperately trying to fight off Superman before Galactacus shows up to eat the Multiverse.
Character Development: 4 stars.
It's not the strongest but it's definitely there. The characters do have personalities and they do have their own stories to be advanced, although I think most of this story is a set up for the larger trilogy. It's okay without being brilliant.
Production: 4 stars.
Does the job with a cover that tells you exactly what you're getting and professional editting. Had a weird thing going where all dialogue, even after logical action tags, would take a new line, making it hard to work out who was talking on occasion. But that may have been a Kobo thing or something.
All up though, good stuff.
Series Potential: 4 stars.
This is obviously an ongoing story with a much larger set of stakes on the table and many character threads left open for more exploration. Hopefully this will also include expanding on the world a lot more. This is, after all, a world in which superheroes fly the skies. Let's discuss that a little more.
Also, good news, there's at least six stories in the series so far. So if you do end up liking this stuff, there's plenty more where that came from.
Wrap Up.
A very fun little romp through the superhero genre which makes you wonder why modern-style superhero prose pulp isn't written more often. Not quite the epic must-read title but a pretty good start.
Most Quotable moment:
"The Second German Reich? Again?" He glared at Francisco. "Remind me to recalibrate the dimensional transporter. You're spending far too much time studying that particular alternate reality."
Francisco looked crestfallen.
In previous posts I’ve argued that the Art Deco movement was
part of a process that saw the cultural authority of the upper classes shift to
middle class producers. These middle class producers would dictate taste for
the vast majority of society in the Post-War middle class consumer-nirvana. In
this way the Art Deco movement not only illustrates the changing of the guard
but, for many, embodies a set of ideals and qualities associated with a
completely different era and way of thinking. An era with its own symbols and
cultural practises that provoke this very different ideology.
To frame it in a controversial light – the previous era was
the last era of elitist culture. To frame it in another ‘less provocative’
light – the previous era was the last era of meaningful class and style.
A previous era of cool...
So in the face of this new rise of middle class cultural
practise – complete with its new youth-driven cultural movements – there were
many who resisted what was happening across society. Although the changes were
new and exciting they were also troublesome and potentially dangerous. In the
face of this cultural chaos, people needed a new breed of heroes to make sense
of it all.
One of those new heroes arrived in 1962. Mister Bond, James
Bond...
James Bond wasn’t the first spy to make it to screen. Far
from it. The spy genre had been percolating away in the background of Hollywood
for decades with plenty of World War 2 war films and Detective pulp stories segueing
neatly into and out of the genre. This was often built on a healthy diet of
popular pulp characters, especially in Britain where characters like The Saint and Bond himself proliferated.
But none of these had the cultural clout of the film version of the MI6 agent
with an obsession for mixing his martinis just so.
The Saint in New York, a 1938 film and series that proceeded Bond.
The genesis of the Bond series was however boosted by the
British penchant for spy television series. Being an English-speaking market
located so close to the Cold War hub of central Europe probably helped, and saw
the creation of several series that while successful, weren’t break out hits in
a global sense, lacking the market clout of an American audience. Two of the
most famous were The Avengers and Danger Man, two series that while
attracting a decent local audience and slowly filtering out to become cult
classics across Europe and other markets, didn’t really take off because they
didn’t attract enough American attention. They were, however, good examples of
the unique British spin on the gentleman spy that would provide the unique
pattern by which Bond would capture the world.
The Real Avengers.
But in 1962 James Bond swaggered onto cinema screens in the
break out hit Dr No and the spy genre
would never be the same again. A dashing gentleman spy like those who had gone
before him, Bond also added a wry sense of humour and more than a few lashings
of adventure, sex appeal and cheeky bombast to create what would become the
archetypal spy movie.
The character quickly grew into a phenomena, not only
spawning an endless run of sequels but also its own genre as film, television
and pulp producers started churning out spy fare for the hungry masses who
couldn’t get enough. By the mid 1960s not only did Bond have several sequels
but television shows like The Man from
U.N.C.L.E, The Saint and Mission: Impossible were springing up everywhere while shows like The Avengers and Danger Man were called back for encores. A mark of the health of
the genre was that not only did these new shows gain their own rabid mainstream
fan bases but other characters and stories sprung up to try and refute the stereotypes
put forward by the Bond films, examples such as the Flint series of films.
Flattery doesn’t always come in the form of a copycat, a jealous backlash often
works just as well.
And like vampire/werewolf stories today, the stories kept
proliferating.
Popular genres often have a half life by which writers use
up every possible scrap of storytelling available to a genre, exhaust the
supply, then move on to the ‘next big thing’ in a storm of parody. The
appearance of these parody versions often marks the end of a genres ‘Golden Age’
as writers no longer take the genre seriously. The few genres that escape this
process become meta-genres that become so vast and portable that they often
show up across a range of other genre stories whenever they can be useful,
watering down the genre tropes to their bare essence. A good example of this
would be the action or adventure ‘genres’ which are so broad you usually need
another adjective to define a movie, such as ‘it’s a sci-fi action/adventure
movie’ or ‘it’s a spy action/adventure movie’.
Not really taking the spy genre seriously...
It could be argued that the spy genre well and truly reached
this phase with the popular spoof series GetSmart, which parodied the genre
mercilessly as the genre died down at the end of the 60s. In its brief but
influential heyday the spy genre had held audiences in thrall on both sides of
the Atlantic, providing a hero that audiences wanted to see over and over again
in many different guises. This new hero saved the (Western) world from vast
government-based conspiracies launched by foreign powers, while enjoying the
thrills and spills of action and adventure that went with the urbane and global
jetsetting of the ‘spy lifestyle’. It was classy, it was cool, and it provoked
a Euro-centric style that refuted current youth lifestyle trends for the upper
class refinement and sensibility that was once the height of fashion. But the
rise of GetSmart signalled that the spy genre was becoming just another
television genre and much of the steam had been used up, the genre drifting
back into obscurity or blending with other genres, such as the spy/heist combination
of the long running Mission: Impossible. The genre was there in the
background but not the dominant force of storytelling it once was.
With one exception: Bond himself.
Still going strong.
In a world where Hollywood and the television industry would
move on to different headlining heroes and different genres of action/adventure
storytelling the Bond series would go on to be the most successful (inflation
adjusted) and longest running movie franchise of all time. And with the current
box office success of the latest Bond film Skyfall,
that run doesn’t appear to be stopping any time soon.
So why has the Bond series not only outlasted its
contemporaries but gone on to be a phenomenal cultural success? Why is Bond a
staple of Hollywood action/adventure storytelling, a British gentleman spy in
amongst a sea of American military hardware toting gunslingers and
revenge-seeking policeman or gangsters?
The heroic competition...
Stay tuned for the final episode of Bond, Art Deco and the
Cool Curve...
Dillon and the Pirates of Xonira by Derrick Ferguson
