Books in the Mail (W/E 2016-01-30)

Some mail issues this week because of snow and the fact that I have an absolutely horrible mail carrier, perhaps the laziest, most vindictive, stupidest mail carrier I’ve ever had..

The Pagan Night (Book One of The Hallowed War) by Tim Akers (Titan Books Trade Paperback 01/19/2016) – After a handful of well-received Steampunk novels (published by Solaris and Pyr), Tim switches gears slightly to Historical/Epic Fantasy. This is a big fat novel, and a series he’s apparently been working on for quite some time. I’ll be posting a review of this one to SFSignal.com.

The Celestial Church has all but eliminated the old pagan ways, ruling the people with an iron hand. Demonic gheists terrorize the land, hunted by the warriors of the Inquisition, yet it’s the battling factions within the Church and age-old hatreds between north and south that tear the land apart.

Malcolm Blakley, hero of the Reaver War, seeks to end the conflict between men, yet it will fall to his son, Ian, and the huntress Gwen Adair to stop the killing before it tears the land apart. The Pagan Night is an epic of mad gods, inquisitor priests, holy knights bound to hunt and kill, and noble houses fighting battles of politics, prejudice, and power.

Enter a world of mad gods, inquisitor-priests, holy knights bound to hunt and kill the broken spirits of the world and the noble Houses caught in their midst, fighting their own battles of politics, prejudice and power. Face the darkness of winter, know the hope of spring, and keep the faith of the Winter Sun.

Morning Star (Book Three of The Red Rising Trilogy) by Pierce Brown (Del Rey Hardcover 02/06/2016) – This one arrived just as I was finishing the first novel in the trilogy, Red Rising. All I’ll say is this: it is highly unlikely that I’ll be reading Morning Star.

Red Rising thrilled readers and announced the presence of a talented new author. Golden Son changed the game and took the story of Darrow to the next level. Now comes the exhilarating conclusion to the Red Rising Trilogy: Morning Star.

Darrow would have lived in peace, but his enemies brought him war. The Gold overlords demanded his obedience, hanged his wife, and enslaved his people. But Darrow is determined to fight back. Risking everything to transform himself and breach Gold society, Darrow has battled to survive the cutthroat rivalries that breed Society’s mightiest warriors, climbed the ranks, and waited patiently to unleash the revolution that will tear the hierarchy apart from within.

Finally, the time has come.

But devotion to honor and hunger for vengeance run deep on both sides. Darrow and his comrades-in-arms face powerful enemies without scruple or mercy. Among them are some Darrow once considered friends. To win, Darrow will need to inspire those shackled in darkness to break their chains, unmake the world their cruel masters have built, and claim a destiny too long denied—and too glorious to surrender.

Dominion (Book Three of The Chronicles of the Invaders) by John Connolly and Jennifer Ridyard (Emily Beslter Books / Simon & Schuster Hardcover 04/05/2016) – A year later and here we have the third in the author duo’s series about an alien invasion publishes..

The third thrilling Chronicles of the Invaders adventure from New York Times bestselling author John Connolly and Jennifer Ridyard mixes classic sci-fi with rich, character-driven plot, as Paul and Syl fight to save Earth from an enemy who is closer than ever.

Syl Hellais and Paul Kerr have traveled through Derith, the mysterious wormhole from which no traveler has ever returned. Yet Derith’s secrets are darker than they imagined, and trapped in a dimension beyond their own, they finally emerge to discover a universe that has moved on without them.

Years have passed, and Civil War rages among the Illyri. It is whispered that the Earth is lost, prey to the alien parasites known as the Others, and other worlds will soon follow. Most shocking of all, the sinister Archmage Syrene of the Nairene Sisterhood has disappeared into the bowels of the Sisterhood’s lair.

But before she cloistered herself, Archmage Syrene chose her replacement. The Sisterhood has a new leader, with her own plans for the future of her race. Now Syl and Paul, teenagers in a deadly adult world, must find a way to change the course of history and save the lives of billions. They have but one hope.

For Syl Hellais is changing…

Daughter of the Blood (Book Three of The Wall of Night) by Helen Lowe (Harper Voyager Mass Market Paperback 01/26/2016) – I’ve been seeing good things about this series from my friends Mark Yon and Paul Weimer, among others. I plan to go a series read through of these books.

A Gemmell Award-Winning Series

Malian of Night and Kalan, her trusted ally, are returning to the Wall of Night—but already it may be too late. The Wall is dangerously weakened, the Nine Houses of the Derai fractured by rivalry and hate. And now, the Darkswarm is rising . . .

Among Grayharbor backstreets, an orphan boy falls foul of dark forces. On the Wall, a Daughter of Blood must be married off to the Earl of Night, a pawn in the web of her family's ambition. On the Field of Blood, Kalan fights for a place in the bride's honor guard, while Malian dodges deadly pursuers in a hunt against time for the fabled Shield of Heaven. But the Darkswarm is gaining strength, and time is running out—for Malian, for Kalan, and for all of Haarth . . .

SFFWorld Review Round up - Stephen King, T.C. McCarthy, and Seth Patrick

We've got some new reviews over at the SFFWorld Blog!  Two from Mark, one from me. I'll do this alphabetically by author last name, which leads us to Mark's review of Joyland by the great Stephen King:

By using evocative language and vivid imagery on the cover (shocked red-headed girl in a green outfit), Stephen’s made sure that readers are aware that it’s a pastiche. It’s meant to have the tone and physical properties of a cheap pulp novel from the 1950’s, although as it’s from Stephen, the style and intelligence of the plot elevate it a little from those potboilers of yesteryear.

With such elements in mind, the plot’s pretty simple. It’s a coming of age tale, a story of a young man (Devin Jones), with a broken heart, who takes on a summer vacation job in Heaven’s Bay at a rather seedy and run-down amusement park called Joyland. There’s an old tale of murder (for what old Amusement Park doesn’t have a tale of murder in its shadows?), and Devin has to deal with some hard and deep life-truths along the way. There’s also a touch of psychic prediction - “There’s a shadow over you”, the fortune teller Madame Fortuna tells Devin – which is reminiscent of other King tales, although much of the beginning of the book is Devin working through the summer, learning the carny ‘Talk’, nursing his destroyed ego and making new friends before deciding that he likes the carny life. He decides to stop on instead of going to college, which means that he stays at Joyland after the main summer season, as the park begins to wind down to season closure and refurbishment.

Yesterday, I reviewed Chimera, the concluding installment of T.C. McCarthy's superb Military Science Fiction series, The Subterrene War:

Bleak, dirty, confined, stressful, uncomfortable… these words only begin to hint at the type of story McCarthy tells in Chimera, the concluding volume of the trilogy. Keeping these rather unpleasant themes together was the compelling power of McCarthy’s narrative. In Chimera, Stan is our first person narrator and the angst he feels throughout the novel is palpable. He resents his wife, he initially blames himself for his old partner’s death, and he hates the germline soldiers (genetically engineered super soldiers) most of all. Stan immediately dislikes his new partner whom who Stan gives a racially derogatory nickname/callsign of Chong. About the only characters with which he gets along are his wife’s son (who is the result of an affair with a nameless man from the factory where the genetically engineered soldiers are created) and the artificial intelligence housed in his body armor, Kristen.

When ‘out’ of the theater of war, at home, or in civilian life, Stan, like all citizens, is constantly monitored. He is unable to have any private discussion with his estranged wife and only when he is in the deepest, least civilized sections of the jungles does Stan come close to feeling unsurveilled. This ratchets up the paranoia level and the theme of no privacy is something the great Philip K. Dick returned to often in his fiction.

Over the weekend, Mark posted his review of Seth Patrick's debut, Reviver, one of the best debuts he's read in a while:

Wow. I wasn’t expecting this one to be that good. But it draws you in from the rather visceral and very chilling first chapter. Reading like a TV series script (and admittedly, it would make a great TV series), the reader is soon getting to know Jonah, his soon-to-be-retiring boss, Sam Deering, Jonah’s reviver colleagues and his friends as he tries to uncover the big conspiracy. They develop into characters the reader is interested in and then concerned about, using the idea of ‘What-if?’ and applying it to the logical consequences within a contemporary time-frame. It’s fast, surprisingly accessible and easy to read, and was a difficult-to-put-down novel in the first thirty pages. Whilst the ideas aren’t that new, the way they’re written is engaging and exciting. Most of all, the majority of the decisions the characters make and the actions they take are sensible and logical, although it does go a little ‘action-hero’ at the end.

This one really worked for me. The set-up’s great, the characters are likeable and easily differentiated. Though we do drag in the odd cliché along the way, there’s enough new revelation as well to make the story work.

Hester, Kent, Esslemont and Wendig at the SFFWorld Blog!

Mark and I have posted Lots of new content on the SFFWorld blog over the past week, a few new reviews and what turned out to be the first interview for the SFFWorld blog since the soft launch/reboot.

Today, I posted my review of a novella from blogger and author Patrick Hester. He launched the Cord Cahill serials with the entertaining novella Cahill’s Homecoming:

When Cord attempts to ask people he knew, friends and former acquaintances, about his sister’s death, few are willing to answer. Cord searches out his sister’s estranged husband Charlie, who has become the town drunk as a result of first, their failed marriage and then, Kate’s death. The two men come to an uncomfortable understanding in their quest for justice.

The immediate thing that came to mind, that resonated with me while reading Cahill’s Homecoming was the television show Firefly, mainly because of the mix of far future and frontier settings. I wouldn’t say Cahill might resemble Malcolm Reynolds, but both men have a gruff exterior which belie a more sympathetic heart. This is best evidenced in Cord’s his words to Charlie, despite their differences and Cord’s displeasure with how Charlie treated Kate, “Today we’re family and family takes care of its own.”

On Sunday, Mark posted his review of the second installment of Steven L. Kent’s Clone Rebellion series, Rogue Clone. The series, initially published by Ace in the US is being issued in the UK by Titan Books. Mark likes how the series is shaping up.

Rogue Clone manages something very difficult from the off: to summarize the events of Book One without too much information dump and move the story on, all within the first thirty pages or so. Whilst war is brewing between the Unified Authority of the Orion Arm (that’s Earth to you and me) and the rebellious Outer Worlds, led by Crowley and the Morgan-Atkins (Mogat) separatists, Wayson Harris of the Unified Authority, now presumed dead, and his mercenary colleague Ray Freeman, are on the hunt for the leaders of the Mogat rebellion. Whilst reporting under cover back to his old mentor, Admiral Klyber, Wayson soon discovers where his nemesis, Amos Crowley of the Galactic Central Fleet, is hiding. We spend much of the beginning of this novel in space, with Harris undercover, guarding Admiral Klyber at a conference on board the Doctrinaire. Harris meets Admiral Huang again, a political enemy of Klyber’s and no friend of the Liberator clones, of which Harris is one of those remaining. Despite this, the conference appears to pass fairly successfully. However an incident after the conference leads to a plot which involves betrayal, political manoeuvring and a coup attempt, whilst in the background the influence of other partners in some rather fragile coalitions become increasingly important.

Yesterday, an interview Mark and I conducted with Ian C. Esslemont, co-creator of the Malazan world was posted on the SFFWorld blog to help celebrate the publication of his latest Malzan Tale Blood and Bone. Here's the direct link to the interview: http://sffworld.blogspot.com/2013/05/ian-c-esslemont-interview-for-blood-and.html.

A week ago, I posted my review to Chuck Wending’s The Blue Blazes, which publishes today. Although this was the first novel I read by the great bearded one of Pennsylvania, I’ve been following him on twitter pretty much since I joined and it will NOT be the last novel I read from him.

What could be a simple novel takes on an air of gravitas because of Wendig’s subtle yet powerful writing. Giving these totems, places, and people titles like The Underworld, The Boss, and The Organization, Wendig lends them a resonance that gives the story great, almost mythic power. This is further enhanced by the “journal clippings” prefacing each chapter, the journal of a lost, possibly insane and possibly fictitious, cartographer of The Great Below, John Atticus Oakes. Such chapter prefaces often work very well for my reading sensibilities and the fact that I found a resonance of sorts with what Chuck Wendig did here to what Mathew Stover (a favorite writer of mine) did in Blade of Tyshalle only heightened my enjoyment because Wendig did just as an effective job with these lost journal fragments.

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It may be reductive to do the whole combine-and-compare thing, but think one part Hellboy, one part Mathew Stover, one part Big Trouble in Little China, and throw in a dash of The Sopranos, the film The Wrestler and pulp sensibilities, and you might have an idea of what a great stew of fun this novel really is. Although I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Mookie is a killer on the same level of Richard “The Iceman” Kuklinski, there’s a similar dichotomy and divide between the family life and the “work life” of the two men. What’s even better is that Wendig seems to only given readers a peek into the world Mookie and his daughter Nora inhabit.

The Forever Knight, NOS4R2, and Book of Sith at SFFWorld

Mark’s got two reviews over the past week (one a catch up due to technical difficulties at SFFWorld) and I’ve got one.

After my re-posts of my reviews of the first three novels in John Marco’s, Bronze Knight Chronicles it should come as no surprise that my review is John’s newest novel The Forever Knight .

The first thing in Marco’s latest novel to distinguish itself from its predecessors is the authorial voice. This time around, John chose to tell Lukien’s tale through Lukien’s own voice utilizing the first person narrative technique. There’s a more intimate feeling to the story, although not quite a coziness, because Lukien is far from being the proverbial happy camper. He’s held his true love as she died, turned his best friend into an enemy, helped the Inhumans secure a place of safety (Grimhold), overthrown a madman, and gained another spiritual familiar in the form of Malator, the Akari. All of this happened in the novels The Eyes of God, The Devil’s Armor, and The Sword of Angels. This past baggage is not necessary for readers unfamiliar with those books to know since John sprinkled enough of Lukien’s past throughout the narrative to give him the weight of a burdened, tired-of-meandering, and on the cusp of breaking character for new readers to jump into the narrative.

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I’ve been a fan of John Marco’s since I read his debut novel The Jackal of Nar well over a decade ago. With each book I’ve read by John, I’ve discovered something new in his writing, a different shade of what his abilities as a storyteller are. In The Forever Knight, John’s written his shortest novel to date, but by no means does that indicate is any less powerful a novel. The first person narrative works very well within this smaller, more tightly focused tale. Reacquainting myself with Lukien’s story, through Lukien’s own voice was a most welcome return.

Mark gets an early look at one of the more hotly anticipated novels of the year. The third novel from Joe Hill, NOS4R2:

The story is mainly told through and around the experiences of Vic McQueen, who begins the story as a young tomboy and rider of bicycles. In a Twilight Zone style twist, Vic finds early on in the novel that she can cycle from her place of residence (the small town world of Englewood, Colorado) to anywhere she chooses, from ‘Found’ to ‘Lost’ and back again, via her accessing what she calls ‘the Shorter Way Bridge’, a rickety bridge that in reality no longer exists. With practice, she finds that she can travel to places to fetch and find things, but not without cost, as there seems to be a physical effect on her every time she transports hers.

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There are (deliberately, I’m sure) echoes of SK throughout this book, with spooky possessed cars, creepy houses, broken people, a large dog, a combination of Twilight Zone elements juxtaposed with homely elements of Americana, albeit often from the hidden underbelly. There’s bikes, cars and girls (or in Vic’s case, boys.) A character named Tabitha (Joe’s mother’s name). And, like IT’s Mike Hanlon, a librarian (with a stutter like Richie Tozier) is there to save the day. Here we channel the vampires of ‘Salem’s Lot and combine them with the creepy car experiences of Christine, as well as adding a smidgen of IT and a touch of The Body (although some may prefer the film title Stand by Me.)

Lastly, Mark reviews something of a novelty book a purported historical artifact from the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Book of Sith - Secrets from the Dark Side by Daniel Wallace:

There are five chapters here, with an encapsulating sixth element from Sidious himself. They show the long history of the rise and fall of the Sith over many thousands of years. Sorzus Syn"s chronicle of the original rise of the Sith Empire, thousands of years ago, begins the collection. It is the tale of a female Jedi, exiled from the Jedi Order, who set herself up as one of the first Sith Lords and created the Sith Code at the time of the Second Great Schism. Darth Malgus"s war journal was written during the Great Galactic War, when the Sith was defeated and the Republic ruled the Empire, as shown in the Old Republic computer games. Darth Bane (from Drew Karpyshyn"s novels) tells of a time when the Sith Order was in decline, having to do their work in the shadows, and shows how the Sith learned from their mistakes. Here Bane summarises his ideas and creates The Rule of Two (namely that one Sith must contain all the power of the dark side and that one Master must decide how that power shall be used) in order to rise again. Mother Talzin"s Wild Power text adds an element of the tale from the Clone Wars, that of the history, beliefs and work of the Nightsisters, a Sith splinter group who became dark side mercenaries. The fifth section is by Darth Plagueis, Darth Sidious" Master, showing his scientific thoughts on the true nature of the nature of the Sith.

Kent & Knight Reviewed at SFFWorld

Another pair of reviews from the usual suspects, (Mark and I), Mark reviews a US author’s book reaching UK shores after success here in the US and I review a UK author’s debut.

On tap for Mark is the first book in a Military Science Fiction series whose fifth book I reviewed a couple of years ago, Steven L. Kent’s The Clone Republic:

It is the year 2508AD. The Unified Authority rules over the galaxy, using clones for much of its policing across the colonies. The story is told from the perspective of one of these clones, Private First-Class Wayson Harris, initially newly assigned to the small and obscure desert outpost of Gobi on a planet called Ravenwood. As a clone, he’s trained to obey without question, and clearly finds the rather laidback setup at Gobi disconcerting.

Part of this attraction may be that initially, for all intents and purposes, the book doesn’t stray too far from the tried and trusted model for military stories. The Marines of 2508 pretty much act and talk like soldiers in 2013. What happens here on a desert-type world in 2508 is very similar to, say, Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan in 2013, a point further emphasized when some of the hardware used has familiar names such as Harrier and Tomahawk which could place the book as easily in the 1980’s as the 2500’s. This reminds the reader that a Marine is a Marine, regardless of time, and nothing really changes that, whether now or in the future. Here they complain, gamble, sleep around and fight one another like any other typical armed force, past, present and (presumably) future.

I take a look at Fade to Black, Francis Knight’s debut novel and the launch of her Rojan Dizon Urban/Dark Fantasy series:

Fade to Black has been categorized as an urban fantasy, but by no means is this the tramp-stamp, sexy magic version of the sub-genre. Rather, this is Urban Fantasy where the city is as much of a character as the people themselves, a novel with more similarities to China Mieville’s King Rat. The protagonist, Rojan Dizon, in addition to being a people finder/bounty hunter, is a pain mage. By inflicting pain unto himself, Dizon is able to locate his quarry more easily; find the proverbial needle in the haystack..

Mahala…a dark sprawling city with layers upon layers of grit and darkness, not exactly the streets of Chicago, Atlanta, or New York. Ruled by the Ministry, perhaps in an allusion to Orwell’s 1984, there’s a great sense of claustrophobia throughout the entire novel. There seems to be nowhere to hide and the characters who inhabit this world, particularly Rojan, have no privacy. There’s a mixed feel of potentially dark future with a hint of pre-industrial city – guns are relatively new, the city is powered by magic, yet the class structure to me felt more modern, something out of a film like American Psycho or even Wall Street. The city itself reminded me a bit of the towering metropolis of Alastair Reynolds’ Terminal World and the dark city of John Meany’s Bone Song, or on the film front the rainy, unnamed city of the film Seven. I also felt a strong resonance with Richard Morgan’s fiction, both his SF and fantasy novels.

Myke Cole, Hugh Howey, & John Birmingham Reviewed

Back to something of a normal Tuesday post here at the o’ stuff wherein I post links, cover art, and an excerpt(s) of book reviews posted to SFFWorld by some combination of Mark Yon (aka Hobbit in the SFFWorld forums) N.E. White (tmso in the SFFWorld forums, Kathryn Ryan (Loerwyn in the SFFWorld forums) and yours truly. This week’s post brings reviews from Nila, Mark, and me.
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While I’ve already posted one book review of a current year/2013 release to Tor.com, here’s my first book review of a current year/2013 release to SFFWorld and it’s a book that I’ve looked forward to reading since reading the first in the series about a year ago. The book, the second installment of Myke Cole’s Shadow OPS series, Fortress Frontier:

In being assigned to the Forward Operating Base (FOB) Frontier in the world of magic, Bookbinder’s story intersects very quickly with Oscar Britton’s story, specifically the moments when Oscar flees the fortress and goes rogue. Oscar’s actions cause the FOB to be cut off from the home plane, something of a sidebar in Control Point but which takes front-and-center position as a major driving force of the plot. Bad goes to worse when a goblin tribe attacks the severely undersupplied FOB killing Bookbinder’s superior and forcing Bookbinder to become the acting head of FOB. Bookbinder’s magical powers emerging and his ascension to the head of the FOB occurs in just the first third of the novel. In other words, Cole packs a great deal of story into the novel, I found myself drawn into the story immediately.
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So, in short, Cole has admirably widened the geopolitical scope of his world in addition to increasing the character lenses through which we as the readers can view this world – a natural and impressive progression. The strength here is that character and world-building are equal parts of the whole and one’s development does not suffer from the growth of the other.

Nila has been following self-publishing sensation (Simon and Schuster picked up his books) Hugh Howey’s WOOL series and continues with the seventh installment Second Shift:

Second Shift begins with ‘Deathdays were birthdays.’ Through Mission, a young porter living in Silo 18, we learn how each life in the silos are linked to another. In the confines of the underground silos, one has to pass on, before another can take their place. Mission learned this the hard way. He lost his mother to a cleaning (the act of sending a silo occupant out into the hostile world to clean and subsequently die) the day he was born, because she hid her pregnancy. This fact haunts him throughout this day - his birthday - and leads him to wonder if he deserves the life he has.
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This is where Mr. Howey’s imagination has lead us to the popular world of the silos, where nothing is as it seems, and this latest addition to the series will not disappoint his fans. With smooth, evocative prose, the author brings us closer to old characters (Donald) and continues to introduce new, relatable characters (Mission and the Crow). Plot threads become clearer, while new ones emerge to tease readers along.

Along with an interview of John Birmingham, Mark reviews John’s Without Warning the first in a Tom Clancy-esque SF series:

However, in this alternate history, the saving of the world is not an option for the Americans. You see, without warning (and hence the title) an energy wave has caused the majority of the USA to disappear, with no survivors.

Really does set up a new scenario, doesn’t it?

With such a global event, and as you might expect, there are a broad range of characters having to deal with the issue from a number of different viewpoints.

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This is a BIG, meaty, novel, and as you might expect, it has big ideas and a broad canvas from the Iraq War in 2003 to Paris in Europe to Acapulco and Seattle. With America gone as primary peace keeper, the world soon descends into chaos as the remaining nations rearrange themselves in to some sort of new world order whilst the Middle East sees the event as some kind of miraculous, if not divine, intervention.

King's Blood by Abraham & A Feast Unknown by Farmer at SFFWorld

We are winding down 2012 with only a few weeks remaining and while I’ve enjoyed a good portion of what I read, the book which I review in today’s post is my top Epic Fantasy for 2012.

Readers of my blog would like surmise that if any author has impressed me this year, based on the quantity of books I’ve read by him in 2012, it would be Daniel Abraham. Though published in the spring, I read The King’s Blood; the second installment of The Dagger and the Coin:

The King’s Blood builds on the strengths and foundation Abraham has thus far displayed in The Dragon’s Path, the first installment of The Dagger and the Coin. The races and politics of these divergent children of the dragon can be seen in greater detail; the threat hinted at in the first volume of the Spider Goddess gains more traction; the conspiracy against the nation of Antea becomes more of a plot element. As characters discover the deeper conspiracy taking root, it isn’t always easy to uncloud one’s judgment to find the heart of the conspiracy. Small thoughts lead to larger decisions, which can lead to war. Something Geder, Dawson (and his family) learns as The King’s Blood builds momentum with each page and chapter.
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Through Geder’s eyes, Abraham evokes a great deal of sympathy for his plight, that ultimately, Geder seems to be trying to do what is best for the Prince under his watch and the land the Prince rules through him. His motivations come across as plausible outgrowths, particularly the less-than-savory aspects of his persona – his frustration, his anger, his jealousy, and his inadequacies. I’m not sure quite what Abraham is building with Geder, it is possible he is being whittled into something of a Big Bad for the series. On those aspects, I find a great deal of similarity between Geder and Walter White of Breaking Bad. Both characters are initially meek and weak, both characters struggle to overcome their fears in what might not be the best of fashions, and through various developments grow out of that shadow into something much more menacing.

Mark reaches into the past through the help of a re-issue of one of the early novels of the late Philip Jose Farmer with A Feast Unknown:

The story, as you might expect from its pulp foundations, is fairly simple and straightforward. Told as if from Volume Nine of the journal of Lord Grandrith (a surrogate Lord Greystoke), it tells of the conflict between Grandrith aka ‘the Apeman’, and the Lord of the Jungle, and Doc Caliban, Man of Bronze. They are clearly two opposites – the Lord of the Jungle is the epitome of man based on Nature, whilst Doc Caliban is a man of Science – although with the same father, Jack the Ripper. Both have been given an elixir that makes them near-immortal through the secret society known as The Nine. .
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Farmer doesn’t stint on the details of this. There’s explicit sex, homosexual rape, bestiality, lots of talk about men’s genitalia, ejaculation, blood-drinking and cannibalism, castration, and throughout some quite odd sexual habits. Farmer’s clearly having a lot of fun with this. Through the Man of Bronze and He-of-the-Apes, we see a difference between rational Science and more emotional irrationality. Part of this is claimed to be because of the longevity elixir, though really perhaps what Farmer is emphasising is that often unspoken societal link between sex and violence, and that the two can be related.