Book 48: HUNT THROUGH NAPOLEON'S WEB by Gabriel Hunt and Raymond Benson, isbn 9780843962574, 320 pages, Dorchester Publishing, $14.00
The Premise: In the sixth, and possibly final, adventure of relic-hunter, and modern-day Indiana Jones, Gabriel Hunt finds himself on a quest to rescue his estranged younger sister, who has been kidnapped by a secret society intent on returning the ancient Egyptian treasures stolen by Napoleon and his men centuries ago. Of course, things are not quite as they seem, and there's the possibility Napoleon had secreted away another Rosetta Stone. Will Gabriel rescue his sister and find an artifact that might already have changed the course of history once?
My Rating: 4 stars
My Thoughts: If this really is the last hurrah for Gabriel Hunt, he goes out in fine form thanks to Raymond Benson. As with the preceding five Hunt books, HUNT THROUGH NAPOLEON'S WEB starts out in a rush (Gabriel and a cohort in the midst of a spelunking accident) and gets faster from there. Oh, there are a few quiet moments mid-book, but like the best pulpy thrillers (both old and new)the quiet doesn't last long.
Benson's story balances the "hunting for clues" and "high adrenaline adventure" aspects pretty well, driving home the point I've made with each book: that Gabriel Hunt really is a modern Indiana Jones, albeit one with a more familial support system than Indy had in the original three movies. Of course Gabriel gets a woman, no surprise there. The least suspenseful part of the book is the "how will they end up in bed" question -- it's become such a predictable part of the books that I don't even worry my little head about it beforehand, unless there's more than one potential bedmate in the book (and in this case, there's not). Benson also provides we faithful readers of the series with a moment we've been waiting for through several books now, and it is a satisfying one.
On the downside, if this is the last Hunt book, there's at least one series-long mystery that has not been resolved and that left me a little frustrated. The background mystery of what happened to the Hunt parents when they disappeared from that cruise ship a decade ago is an intriguing one, but it's also one I'd hate to see go unresolved forever. Hopefully, publisher Charles Ardai can convince someone to bring out at least one more Gabriel Hunt book. And if Raymond Benson writes it, I'm okay with that too. (Benson, or Christa Faust, or Ardai himself -- they've provided I think my three favorite installments of the six, not that I've been disappointed in any of them.)
Book 49: AFTERTHOUGHTS by Lawrence Block, isbn 9780843962574, 320 pages, Dorchester Publishing, $14.00
The Premise: A lot of Lawrence Block's early work has been reissued recently in e-book format, and Block has written new afterwords (and in some cases forewords) to explain a bit about how the books were written. All of those pieces are collected in AFTERTHOUGHTS.
My Rating: 5 stars
My Thoughts: Every time in the past month that I told people I was reading a book collecting Lawrence Block's afterwords (and some introductions) from various ebooks, I got the same response: a somewhat quizzical raising of the eyebrows and a vague "oohhh" sound that indicated I had perhaps lost my mind, because how interesting could a bunch of afterwords be, anyway?
Very interesting is the answer.
Block is a master storyteller not matter what form or format he's working in. These essays (and that's what they are) are the next best thing to a full-on memoir. In them, he relates how each book he discusses came to be written but he also manages to tell the highlights of his life story and of course share some anecdotes about his writer friends.
What makes the book interesting is that each afterword was originally written and published separately. And so what we get when we take them as a whole is various angles on the same set of life experiences. In some hands, that could just feel repetitive. But Block doesn't tell the story the same way twice even as he manages to keep all the details consistent. By the sixth or seventh (I didn't bother actually counting) retelling of his time working the slush pile for the Scott Meredith Agency, I felt like I was hanging at the bar with an old friend listening to a story I knew the ending to but couldn't wait to hear anyway.
If you want a glimpse into what the "paperback originals" market was like for writers in the 60s and 70s, as well as a look at why someone would choose to write under multiple pseudonyms long past the time where he'd need to, read AFTERTHOUGHTS. If you want an overview of a writing life, read AFTERTHOUGHTS. If you want to get to know Lawrence Block better, but despair of ever meeting him in person, read AFTERTHOUGHTS. If you want to laugh while you glean some advice on writing, read AFTERTHOUGHTS.
Well, what are you waiting for? Go read AFTERTHOUGHTS already!
Showing posts with label gabriel hunt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gabriel hunt. Show all posts
Friday, September 9, 2011
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Hunt in Shanghai
Book 44: Hunt Among The Killers of Men by Gabriel Hunt, as told to David J. Schow, isbn 9780843962567, 265 pages, Leisure Adventure, $6.99
The fifth of six projected Gabriel Hunt adventures finds our man Hunt in Shanghai and nearby, searching for a missing friend of his younger sister, hoping to find her before she can get revenge on the Chinese mobster who killed her own sister. This being a Hunt adventure, some sort of ancient treasure or ancient legend must come into play. This time it is the legendary Killers of Men -- the terra-cotta army of Chinese warlord Kangxi Shih-K'ai which is supposed to include the warlord's entombed body.
Hunt books are always a thrill-ride. This one is no exception. There are a number of "set-piece action sequences" that you can easily picture being in the next Bourne or Salt movie. Where previous Hunt installments felt like "Indiana Jones in the modern era" thanks to most of the objects being sought having mythological qualities (the fountain of youth, sphinxes, a city under the polar ice cap), this book felt more like a modern spy thriller thanks to the treasure being of more recent vintage and less mystical (the statues are needed for purely mundane, gangster-war reasons). In fact, I didn't realize how heavily I was expecting things to take a supernatural bend until the final end-gambit started and I realized there would be no actual supernatural event this time. "Co-author" David J. Schow actually writes a bit against type here. He's known for horror, especially splatterpunk, and for the scripts for various slasher flick franchises. I expected a more horror-based story and was pleasantly surprised to get this spy-thriller instead. The action sequences fly fast and furious, the dialogue is pretty snappy. Another change from previous Hunt books: there are almost as many scenes without Gabriel as there are with. Schow takes full advantage of his movie script experience to write a Hunt book that really feels like it's ready to be a movie: high on action, decent on character, low on CGI needs.
Characterization is always present at some level. Over the course of five books Gabriel, his brother Michael, and even their sister Lucy, have all been drawn well. At first Gabriel and Michael were fairly stock -- if Gabe was Indy, Michael was a young Marcus Brody; if Gabe is Doc Savage, Michael is Renny. Lucy appears not at all in the first few books, and we don't get too much of her personality in the one book before this that she's a main part of. Schow uses her sparingly, but gives us more of her personality and more of her relationship with Gabriel (although notably not with Michael) from when they were kids. Series editor Charles Ardai also smartly lets Schow add some detail to the mystery of the Missing Hunt Parents. Ambrose and Cordelia Hunt have been missing since a mass disappearance off of an ocean liner on the eve of "the millenium," and we learn a little bit about what they were investigated prior to that cruise in this tale. Schow also gives us the requisite Hunt femme fatales / damsels in distress, but puts a welcome different spin on them.
So, final verdict: if the more Indiana Jones stylings of the earlier books in the series were not your thing, give KILLERS OF MEN a try and I think you'll enjoy it. And if those earlier stylings were your thing -- well, variety is the spice of life, and it's good for series characters to have their adventures break from the formula occasionally!
There is one more Hunt book left, HUNT THROUGH NAPOLEON'S WEB, due out in a few months. With the closing of Dorchester Publishing's mass market paperback division, it seems that the final Gabriel Hunt will be out in e-reader format only at first. But Charles Ardai has vowed that it will come out, and in print eventually. I'm hopefully the last book will bring more details on what happened to the Hunt parents.
The fifth of six projected Gabriel Hunt adventures finds our man Hunt in Shanghai and nearby, searching for a missing friend of his younger sister, hoping to find her before she can get revenge on the Chinese mobster who killed her own sister. This being a Hunt adventure, some sort of ancient treasure or ancient legend must come into play. This time it is the legendary Killers of Men -- the terra-cotta army of Chinese warlord Kangxi Shih-K'ai which is supposed to include the warlord's entombed body.
Hunt books are always a thrill-ride. This one is no exception. There are a number of "set-piece action sequences" that you can easily picture being in the next Bourne or Salt movie. Where previous Hunt installments felt like "Indiana Jones in the modern era" thanks to most of the objects being sought having mythological qualities (the fountain of youth, sphinxes, a city under the polar ice cap), this book felt more like a modern spy thriller thanks to the treasure being of more recent vintage and less mystical (the statues are needed for purely mundane, gangster-war reasons). In fact, I didn't realize how heavily I was expecting things to take a supernatural bend until the final end-gambit started and I realized there would be no actual supernatural event this time. "Co-author" David J. Schow actually writes a bit against type here. He's known for horror, especially splatterpunk, and for the scripts for various slasher flick franchises. I expected a more horror-based story and was pleasantly surprised to get this spy-thriller instead. The action sequences fly fast and furious, the dialogue is pretty snappy. Another change from previous Hunt books: there are almost as many scenes without Gabriel as there are with. Schow takes full advantage of his movie script experience to write a Hunt book that really feels like it's ready to be a movie: high on action, decent on character, low on CGI needs.
Characterization is always present at some level. Over the course of five books Gabriel, his brother Michael, and even their sister Lucy, have all been drawn well. At first Gabriel and Michael were fairly stock -- if Gabe was Indy, Michael was a young Marcus Brody; if Gabe is Doc Savage, Michael is Renny. Lucy appears not at all in the first few books, and we don't get too much of her personality in the one book before this that she's a main part of. Schow uses her sparingly, but gives us more of her personality and more of her relationship with Gabriel (although notably not with Michael) from when they were kids. Series editor Charles Ardai also smartly lets Schow add some detail to the mystery of the Missing Hunt Parents. Ambrose and Cordelia Hunt have been missing since a mass disappearance off of an ocean liner on the eve of "the millenium," and we learn a little bit about what they were investigated prior to that cruise in this tale. Schow also gives us the requisite Hunt femme fatales / damsels in distress, but puts a welcome different spin on them.
So, final verdict: if the more Indiana Jones stylings of the earlier books in the series were not your thing, give KILLERS OF MEN a try and I think you'll enjoy it. And if those earlier stylings were your thing -- well, variety is the spice of life, and it's good for series characters to have their adventures break from the formula occasionally!
There is one more Hunt book left, HUNT THROUGH NAPOLEON'S WEB, due out in a few months. With the closing of Dorchester Publishing's mass market paperback division, it seems that the final Gabriel Hunt will be out in e-reader format only at first. But Charles Ardai has vowed that it will come out, and in print eventually. I'm hopefully the last book will bring more details on what happened to the Hunt parents.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Teaser and WWW
Between the very poor wireless in the hotel in Oregon, IL, and then the travel misadventures of yesterday, neither Teaser Tuesday nor WWW Wednesday got written. So here they are:
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
* Grab your current read.
* Open to a random page.
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page.
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
Here's my teaser from Lev Grossman's The Magicians:
... the test gave him a passage from The Tempest, then asked him to make up a fake language, and then translate the Shakespeare into the made-up language. He was then asked questions about the grammar and orthography of his made-up language, and then -- honestly, what was the point? -- questions about the made-up geography and culture and society of the made-up country where his made-up language was so fluently spoken.
It's not the greatest teaser in terms of plot, but it gives you a sense of the writing style. I'm enjoying this book, and it even sparked a conversation with the waitress at Ruby Tuesday's tonight.
**********
WWW Wednesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!
To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…
I Am Currently Reading: THE MAGICIANS by Lev Grossman. The book has been highly recommended by a few people, including new Twitter / blogger friend RoofBeamReader. I put it in my backpack to read on the flight from Chicago to Nashville; actually ended up reading it on the DC to Nashville leg of the revised trip, and then more over dinner tonight. And had one of those wonderful experiences at dinner, where the waitress asked what the book was, and we talked about it and about voracious reading habits and the like.
I Recently Finished Reading: Robert Silverberg's TO OPEN THE SKY. TOtS is long out-of-print, but you can find used copies on Amazon. A few years back I found four copies on the shelves at Powell's Books in Portland and gave them out to friends. This was the first actual science fiction novel not aimed at kids that I ever read, back in 5th or 6th grade, and I still own the same dog-eared, yellowing copy. I reread it every few years, and still love it. I have delayed putting up a review post simply because the book means so much to me I want to give it a lot of thought.
I Think I'll Read Next: The new Gabriel Hunt adventure, HUNT AMONG THE KILLERS OF MEN, is up next. Because even though I'm starting to feel a bit of genre-burn-out, I still need me some Hunt hijinx. Especially knowing this is the next-to-last book as of right now. He's a Jones for our times, Gabriel Hunt is.
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
* Grab your current read.
* Open to a random page.
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page.
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
Here's my teaser from Lev Grossman's The Magicians:
... the test gave him a passage from The Tempest, then asked him to make up a fake language, and then translate the Shakespeare into the made-up language. He was then asked questions about the grammar and orthography of his made-up language, and then -- honestly, what was the point? -- questions about the made-up geography and culture and society of the made-up country where his made-up language was so fluently spoken.
It's not the greatest teaser in terms of plot, but it gives you a sense of the writing style. I'm enjoying this book, and it even sparked a conversation with the waitress at Ruby Tuesday's tonight.
**********
WWW Wednesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!
To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…
* What are you currently reading?
* What did you recently finish reading?
* What do you think you’ll read next?
I Am Currently Reading: THE MAGICIANS by Lev Grossman. The book has been highly recommended by a few people, including new Twitter / blogger friend RoofBeamReader. I put it in my backpack to read on the flight from Chicago to Nashville; actually ended up reading it on the DC to Nashville leg of the revised trip, and then more over dinner tonight. And had one of those wonderful experiences at dinner, where the waitress asked what the book was, and we talked about it and about voracious reading habits and the like.
I Recently Finished Reading: Robert Silverberg's TO OPEN THE SKY. TOtS is long out-of-print, but you can find used copies on Amazon. A few years back I found four copies on the shelves at Powell's Books in Portland and gave them out to friends. This was the first actual science fiction novel not aimed at kids that I ever read, back in 5th or 6th grade, and I still own the same dog-eared, yellowing copy. I reread it every few years, and still love it. I have delayed putting up a review post simply because the book means so much to me I want to give it a lot of thought.
I Think I'll Read Next: The new Gabriel Hunt adventure, HUNT AMONG THE KILLERS OF MEN, is up next. Because even though I'm starting to feel a bit of genre-burn-out, I still need me some Hunt hijinx. Especially knowing this is the next-to-last book as of right now. He's a Jones for our times, Gabriel Hunt is.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
WWW Wednesdays
WWW Wednesdays is another weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!
To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…
I Am Currently Reading: TO OPEN THE SKY by Robert Silverberg. TOtS is long out-of-print, but you can find used copies on Amazon. A few years back I found four copies on the shelves at Powell's Books in Portland and gave them out to friends. This was the first actual science fiction novel not aimed at kids that I ever read, back in 5th or 6th grade, and I still own the same dog-eared, yellowing copy. I reread it every few years, and still love it.
I Recently Finished Reading: Scott Sigler's ANCESTOR. Sigler is the new master of gory, high adrenaline, thriller/sf/horror fiction. Ancestor posits a world where a private company is close to genetically engineering an animal from which organs can be harvested and transplanted into humans ... and of course things go horribly wrong.
I Think I'll Read Next: Either the new Gabriel Hunt adventure, HUNT AMONG THE KILLERS OF MEN, or Lev Grossman's THE MAGICIANS. I usually read the Hunt books as soon as they come out, and I'm a few weeks behind on doing that. But Grossman's book has been highly recommended by a few people, including new Twitter / blogger friend RoofBeamReader. So we'll see which jumps at me when I'm done with the Silverberg.
To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…
* What are you currently reading?
* What did you recently finish reading?
* What do you think you’ll read next?
I Am Currently Reading: TO OPEN THE SKY by Robert Silverberg. TOtS is long out-of-print, but you can find used copies on Amazon. A few years back I found four copies on the shelves at Powell's Books in Portland and gave them out to friends. This was the first actual science fiction novel not aimed at kids that I ever read, back in 5th or 6th grade, and I still own the same dog-eared, yellowing copy. I reread it every few years, and still love it.
I Recently Finished Reading: Scott Sigler's ANCESTOR. Sigler is the new master of gory, high adrenaline, thriller/sf/horror fiction. Ancestor posits a world where a private company is close to genetically engineering an animal from which organs can be harvested and transplanted into humans ... and of course things go horribly wrong.
I Think I'll Read Next: Either the new Gabriel Hunt adventure, HUNT AMONG THE KILLERS OF MEN, or Lev Grossman's THE MAGICIANS. I usually read the Hunt books as soon as they come out, and I'm a few weeks behind on doing that. But Grossman's book has been highly recommended by a few people, including new Twitter / blogger friend RoofBeamReader. So we'll see which jumps at me when I'm done with the Silverberg.
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