Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming - Roger Zelazny and Robert Sheckley

   1991; 310 pages.  Book 1 (out of 3) in the “Millennial Contest” series.  New Authors? : Yes, and no.  Genres : Humorous Fantasy; Fairy Tales.   Overall Rating: 5*/10.

 

    It’s 1000 CE and you know what that means.  Well, actually you probably don’t, unless you’re a demon or an angel.

 

    Those creatures, for better and for worse, know it’s time for the Millennial Contest, a competition that takes place only every thousand years, and which will determine whether Good or Evil will control the universe for the next millennium.

 

    Azzie Elbub is a charismatic but malevolent demon who is determined to win the event for the Dark Side. His scheme is to reenact the age-old Sleeping Beauty tale but with a startling new twist: when Prince Charming finally makes it to where Sleeping Beauty reposes, his quest will end in disaster.

 

    Good luck, Azzie.  Somehow, I think this will turn out to be “too much of a bad thing.”

 

What’s To Like...

    Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming is a lighthearted 1991 novel featuring the collaborative efforts of two respected sci-fi/fantasy authors, Roger Zelazny and Robert Sheckley.  The other two books in the trilogy are If at Faust You Don’t Succeed and A Farce to be Reckoned With.  ANAICT, none of these are available in e-book format.

 

    The storyline is an amusing depiction of the differences, and similarities, between the nature of good and evil.  There are also several fairy tales – Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Aladdin – worked into the tale..  Azzie is a fun-to-watch protagonist; he may be an evil demon but he’s carrying out a noble mission, albeit for the dark side, and is repeatedly beset by the underworld's bureaucracy and his own ineptness.

 

    There are drawings, usually of one of the characters, at the start of each of the 10 parts.  Each part has between 5 and 13 chapters, with an average length of just about 5 pages per chapter.  There are critters galore to meet and dread, including talking ponies (as well as talking swords and talking spells), dragons, Harpies, Valkyries, dwarves. and the Morrigan.  Most of the settings are in Western Europe in 1000 CE, with an excursion or two into the Underworld.

 

    The book is a vocabulary-lover's delight.  There are a bunch of highfalutin ones such as: palaverations, fuscating, quiddities, ensorcelled, congeries, aftertides, scansions, ensor, and those were just the ones that dazzled me after I started keeping writing them down.  A couple more are listed below.

 

    The trivia details were also neat.  Mad King Ludwig, Peer Gynt, and Turkestan get mentioned, as well as the ancient Irish legends Finn McCool and Cuchulain.  Cuisine-wise, nachos and pho make an appearance, but so does fermented dragon poop.  And I’m definitely going to get me a pair of Seven League Boots, although they do have their drawbacks.

 

    You can pretty much figure out which side will emerge victorious in this contest, but the fun is watching Azzie getting vexed the all snags in his that crop up in his scheming.  More about the ending in a bit.  There’s a cute Epilogue at the very end.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.5*/5, based on 36 ratings and 15 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.74*/5, based on 3,638 ratings and 136 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word…

Bosky (adj.) : wooded; covered by trees or bushes.

Others: Seneschal (n.); Caitiff (n.).

 

 

Excerpts...

    “I love you; the bad enchantment has ended at last, and we can be together again, just as you have always wanted and I secretly have wanted, too, though I said otherwise.”

    “What enchantment?” Ylith said.

    “Did I mention an enchantment?”

    “You said, ‘Now the bad enchantment has ended.’”

    “I said that?  You’re sure?”

    “Of course I’m sure!”

    “Well, I shouldn’t have,” Azzie said.  (pg. 109)

 

    “Where is your sword?”

    “I need to get it.”

    “You’re supposed to have a sword on your person at all times.”

    “Give me a break, it’s my wedding day.”

    “Well, go get your sword, but be quick about it.”

    “Frike, you were practically a father to me.  How can you do this?”

    “Well, I’m playing a pretty traditional role,” Frike said.  “The crippled servant who is slightly sympathetic but still has a fatal bias toward evil.  Nothing personal, but we must fight it out with swords.”

    “Well, rats,” Charming said.  “Wait right here.  I’ll be back with my sword.”  (pg. 277)

 

“Cowardice is nothing to be ashamed of, Prince Charming. (…) It is like measles—most people get it at least once in their lives.”  (pg. 279)

    As expected in any fairy-tale/fantasy story, there’s very little cussing.  I noted just 4 instances in the first third of the book, and those were relatively mild ones.

 

    The writing style is adequate, the early hiccups to Azzie’s plans are humorous, but the main storyline drags and after a while I just wanted to get on with the Millennial Contest.  There is a decent amount of wit – that’s a trademark of both authors – but it seemed aimed at a junior-high reader, adult readers may find it simplistic.

 

    The big problem is the ending.  When we finally get to the climax of both Good and Evil’s projects, they both fizzle out.  Babriel’s is barely mentioned and a complete flop, and Azzie’s “Napping Beauty” scenario plays out in the worst possible way for Evil.  Both are without an iota of tension or excitement.  I was expecting more action and adventure in a book titled Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming.  Maybe each author expected the other one to come up with a boffo ending.

 

    5 Stars.

A Lion Among Men - Gregory Maguire

   2008; 309 pages.  New Author? : No.  Book 3 (out of 4) in the “The Wicked Years” series.  Genres: Revisionist Fairy Tale; Fantasy; Fairy Tales.  Overall Rating : 5*/10.

 

    Let’s face it, in the classic movie The Wizard of Oz, the Cowardly Lion gets portrayed in a pretty poor light.  He’s the King of the Beasts, yet he’d be the first one to tell you that he’s a chicken at heart.

 

    He joins up with Dorothy and her little troupe on the Yellow Brick Road as they journey to meet the Wizard of Oz.  The WOO (the Animals’ moniker for the Wizard) gives the Cowardly Lion a magic medal, promising that it will make him brave, but in reality, it has a placebo effect, because it turns out the Lion already was imbued with bravery.  He just needed to realize it.  What an idiot.

 

    But that’s just one side of the story.  Maybe the Cowardly Lion only thinks he’s a scaredy-cat.  Or maybe he’s a victim of a smear campaign, either by the Emerald City citizens or those pint-sized Munchkinlanders.

 

    It’s time to hear the other side of the story.

 

What’s To Like...

    A Lion Among Men is the third book in Gregory Maguire’s “The Wicked Years” series.  The first book, Wicked, was a fantastic success as a novel, a musical, and a soundtrack album.  I’ve been reading the series in order, but at a rate of about one book every six years or so.  Each book focuses on a different character from the world of Oz: Wicked retells the story of Elphaba Thropp, aka the “Wicked Witch of the West”.  Book 2, Son of a Witch, examines the life of a boy rumored to be Elphaba’s son, Liir.

 

    Now it’s the Cowardly Lion’s turn to grace the spotlight. His name is Brrr, and he knows next to nothing about his parents, clan, homeland, and early years.  He wanders all over the countryside, asking anyone he meets whether they might remember a stray lion cub.  For the most part, it's to no avail.

 

    Along his way, Brrr and the reader meet all sorts of interesting creatures.  Almost all of the animals talk, including Bears, Ocelots, Squirrels, Apes, and Boars.  But there are also Trolls, Dragons, Dwarves, and Tree Elves to cross paths with, as well as lots of humans.

 

    One of the two main storylines features Yackle, an incredibly old Maunt (aka “Nun”) who’s forgotten how to die.  As an “official court reporter” for the Emperor of Oz, Brrr is entitled to interview her, ostensibly looking for information as to the whereabouts of Elphaba and Liir.  However it turns out that Brrr has an ulterior motive.  The other main storyline doesn’t get started until around page 260, and it would be a spoiler to give any details.

 

    The ending is a mixed bag.  Some of the plot threads are tied up, such as Yackle’s.  At least I think hers is.  Others remain unresolved, presumably to be addressed in the next and final book in the series, Out of Oz, which resides on my Kindle.  I wouldn’t call A Lion Among Men a standalone story, although at the rate I’ve been reading these, for me it essentially was.  Methinks it would behoove me to read Book 4 in the not-too-distant future.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Come a cropper (v., phrase) : to suffer a defeat or disaster.

Others: Demimonde (n.); Put paid to (v., phrase); Haut monde (n., phrase).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 979 ratings and 359 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.32/5 based on 27,838 ratings and 2,037 reviews.

 

Things That Sound Dirty But Aren’t…

    “I’ll come with,” said the Squirrel succulently.  “Not if you value your nuts.”  (pg. 166)

 

Excerpts...

    “Do you know why the chicken crossed the road?”

    “Is this a joke?”

    Nothing was a joke to Dorothy.  “Because I was on the other side,” she finished.  “I was standing on one foot and singing a little song about, oh, I don’t know what.  And that brave little hen crossed the dangerous road to be with me.”

    “What happened to her?”

    “One Saturday night Uncle Henry wrung her neck and Auntie Em made chicken stew.  I cried and cried but actually she tasted pretty good.”  (pg. 159)

 

    One may, oh, cook poorly, or be socially graceless, or invest unwisely, or fail to achieve the best of personal hygiene.  But one doesn’t want to live wrong—from breath to breath, from start to finish, to get it wrong, so wrong, so fully wrong, that one has never had the glimmer of an idea that it might be better.  Or does one?  Maybe if you’re going to get it that wrong, it’s better to get it all wrong.  The proverbial stupid ant crawling on the hat brim of the prophet, eager only for the shade behind the prophet’s left ear, and ignorant of the civilization-altering sermon it is witnessing.  (pg. 194)

 

“Fate is only fate once it has happened.  Even our own deaths are only theoretical until we croak.”  (pg. 261)

    There are some quibbles.  The amount of cussing is low – I counted 8 instances in the first 20%, but it does include some f-bombs.  There are one or two rolls-in-the-hay, and a couple mentions of feminine cycles.

 

    One reviewer complained about the excessively flowery language, and there is at least one passage like that.  But I think Gregory Maguire was making a point there, and frankly, 99% of the text is easy to comprehend.

 

    There’s lots of extras at the start of the book: Ruling Family Trees, Oz’s recent history, and an excerpt from Brrr’s backstory.  Only the last one is worth your time, and it just gives a valuable hint as to how Brrr came to be, which is good to know as we tag along with him seeking information of his family tree.

 

    The biggest problem with A Lion Among Men is the slow pacing and lack of excitement.  The first three-quarters of the book is really just a lot of talking and zero action.  Given that the armies of “Loyal Oz” and the “Free State of Munchkinland” are itching to go to war, and that the mauntery (“nunnery”) where Brrr is interviewing Yackle lies in the direct path of both those armies, there was ample opportunity for some thrills and spills.  But it never happens.

 

    All of which made for a boring read.  Hopefully Out of Oz will be a lot more exciting.

 

    5 Stars.  As shown above, there’s a sizable disparity between the Amazon rating of A Lion Among Men and the Goodreads one.  In most cases, I’ve found that the latter’s score is the more accurate of the two.  Certainly its database (27,838 ratings) is a lot larger than Amazon’s (979 ratings).

Lord Foul's Bane - Stephen R. Donaldson

   1977; 474 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Book 1 (out of 10) in the series “The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant”, and Book 1 (out of 3) in the subseries “The First Chronicles”.  Genres : Epic Fantasy.  Overall Rating: 5*/10.

    There’s no other explanation for it – this has to be a dream.

    That’s the logical conclusion Thomas Covenant comes to about the strange new world he suddenly finds himself in.  For one thing, he’s painfully aware (literally) that he suffers from the most terrifying disease of all – leprosy.  Yet in this new world, he seems to be magically on the way to recovery.

    For another thing, there’s a couple of nasty people – and we use that term loosely – that he meets who want to charge him with a task: deliver a message of doom to a bunch of people he’s never met and has no idea where they dwell.  Ah well, at least this is going to be an exciting dream.

    Of course, a skeptic may question the duration of this “dream”: it seems to go on for days on end.  But Thomas has an explanation for that – the last thing he remembers in the “real world” was stepping out in front of a speeding police car.  Maybe he’s in a coma and dreaming.

    But the clincher for the dream hypothesis is a song-singing, tale-telling muscles-rippling guy named Saltheart Foamfollower.  Who stands out in a crowd.  Literally.  He's twelve feet tall.

    You don’t see many twelve-foot humans walking around in the real world.

What’s To Like...

    Lord Foul’s Bane is the opening book in Stephen R. Donaldson’s ten-volume Epic Fantasy series called “The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant”.  The series is further divided into three trilogies, with the final one actually having a fourth book in it.

    If you like your protagonists to be anti-heroic (and I do), Thomas Covenant is your kind of guy.  He’s rude to everyone, is quick to anger, wallows self-pity, and shouldn’t be left alone with young girls.  I’m hard-pressed to recall a less-likable protagonist than this, and I'm going to presume that he gets nobler as the series progresses.

    If you loved Lord of the Rings, and are searching for something similar, this is also your answer.  Dwarves and Elves abound (although they go by different names); there’s a “Ring of Power”; a perilous journey to Rivendell, (oops, I mean “Revelstone”), a Gollum equivalent; the Mirkwood Forest becomes the Morinmoss Forest; Mount Doom becomes Mount Thunder, and wearing the ring while baddies are nearby may be hazardous to your finger.  All that’s missing is some hobbits and Tom Bombadil.  Rest assured however, the way everything gets resolved here is markedly different from LOTR.

    As would be expected, there are a bunch of storylines to follow.  To wit:

    a.) Just how “real” is Thomas’s fantasy land?

    b.) Is he really Berek Halfhand reincarnated?

    c.) Why is the moon incarnadine (see below)?

    d.) What is “wrong” with the land?

    e.) Will Thomas live to deliver his message?

Another half-dozen or so plot threads spring up along the way, but this is a spoiler-free review.

    The text is a vocabularian’s delight.  The moon isn’t red, it’s incarnadine.  A face isn’t ugly, it’s roynish.  If you don’t like fifty-cent words used where a five-cent one would do, this can get tedious, but I thought it was done well.  A couple of my favorites are listed below, and there were dozens more.  I also liked the brief mention of synesthesia on page 24: “sounds have aroma, smells have color and depth, sights have texture, touches have pitch and timbre.”

    There’s a tremendously-useful Glossary in the back.  Bookmark it, you will be referring to it a lot.  There’s also a map in the front, although in my mass-market paperback it was kind of blurry.  The chapters are moderately long, averaging just under 20 pages each.  There’s a fair amount of cussing, but the choice of words is limited to variations of “hell” and “damn”, which overall are pretty tame.

    The ending is exciting and spread over about a hundred pages, and I consider that a plus.  Some good guys die; some bad guys don’t, and there's a neat twist in the epilogue that I never saw coming.  Very few of the storylines listed above are tied up, but hey, this is just the start of a ten-book series, and the main aims of the quest place upon our heroes here do get resolved.

Kewlest New Word ...

Roynish (adj., archaic) : mangy, scabby.

Others: Carious (adj.); Eyot (n.); Demesne (n.); Benighted (adj.).

Excerpts...

    “I did not know that it is your custom to make strangers prisoner.”

    The man who held the torch stepped forward and bowed seriously.  “When we are sure, we will ask your pardon.  Until that time, you must come with me to a place where you may be examined.  We have seen strange tokens, and see more now.”  He nodded at Covenant.  “We would make no mistake, either in trust or in doubt.  Will you accompany me?”

    “Very well,” Atiaran sighed.  “But you would not be treated so in Mithil Stonedown.”

    The man replied, “Let the Stonedownors taste our troubles before they despise our caution.”  (pg. 134)

    Foamfollower’s question caught him wandering.  “Are you a storyteller, Thomas Covenant?”

    Absently, he replied, “I was, once.”

    “And you gave it up?  Ah, that is as sad a tale in three words as any you might have told me.  But a life without a tale is like a sea without salt.  How do you live?”  (…)

    “I live.”

    “Another?” Foamfollower returned.  “In two words, a story sadder than the first.  Say no more – with one word you will make me weep.”  (pg. 182)

“All you need to avid despair is irremediable stupidity or unlimited stubbornness.”  (pg. 386 )

    Sadly, there is much to quibble about in Lord Foul’s Bane.  The descriptions of the lands are long and numerous, the storyline’s pacing is incredibly slow, and while there is some fighting and intrigue in the first half of the book, Thomas doesn’t get pulled into the action until around page 300.  That’s a long time to wait for your protagonist to get involved.

    Foamfollower’s songs and tales are plentiful and “meh”.  I winced at a couple of typos (thing/think – page 93; spent/spend – page 94), I don’t expect such slips by a publisher such as Del Rey.  And as much as like anti-heroes, Thomas Covenant is just despicable.  Finally, the less said about the sexual assault scene, the better.

    I’ve been looking forward to reading something by this author for quite some time, and I have to admit, I came away disappointed.  According to Wikipedia, this was Stephen R. Donaldson first published book, so maybe it’s just a “diamond in the rough” and things improve hereafter.  It will be interesting to see if the thrills-&-spills and pacing pick up as the series progresses.

    5 Stars.  The last one hundred pages are very good, and make up for a lot of the plodding the reader has to do to get to it.  But a lot of readers are going to give up long before then.

The Missing Link - Brandon Meyers and Bryan Pedas

   2011; 349 pages.  New Author(s)? : Yes and Yes.  Genres : Fantasy; Satire; General Humorous Fiction.  Overall Rating : 5*/10.

    It’s been a horrible morning for Brent Porter.  The server at TriuTek is down (again), and there’s a big corporate meeting scheduled for this morning.  Since Brent is TriuTek’s IT geek, his coworkers are expecting him to fix it, and do so pronto, since they have lots of Internet things to do, none of which are work-related.  But that’s not the worst part.

    Everybody’s cellphone, including Brent’s, isn’t working this morning either.  That might mean the phone company’s Internet is also down, which could be a sign that the power outage area is a lot larger than just TriuTek's office.  But that’s not the worst part.

    An ugly-looking monster just walked out of the server room, chewing on Ethernet cables.  It’s child-sized, mud-colored, and with a mouthful of super-sharp teeth that warn Brent to keep his distance.  But that’s not the worst part.

    That little gremlin has just stolen Brent’s very own personal router.  And that’s why things couldn’t get any worse.

What’s To Like...

    The Missing Link is a mash-up of Lewis Carroll’s classic tale Alice In Wonderland with a post-apocalyptic scenario where all electronic devices are dead.  Both of those concepts have been done before (a review of one is here; and of the other is here, but combining the two is a novel idea.  You can call the genre Fantasy or Spoof, but don't call it Science Fiction which is what Amazon labels it.

   There are three plotlines to follow.  1.) Brent and his security-guard pal Mickey start in Denver and go dimension-hopping to all sorts of other places, bashing monster heads along the way.  2.) Molly, Brent’s internet girlfriend, experiences warped-&-updated versions of the Alice in Wonderland adventures.  3.) The Downriver Boys, a bit of a misnomer since one of them is a woman and another is a beagle, start in Chicago, and, well, pretty much stay in Chicago, bashing monster heads in clever, makeshift ways.  All three storylines eventually come together, which is not a spoiler since you know that’s going to happen.

    The emphasis throughout is on humor, although it’s the “snarky parody” type, which is not to everyone’s taste.  Brandon Meyers and Bryan Pedas take jabs at Greepeace Hippies, Facebook, cellphones, iPads, Twitter, anti-virus programs, Starbucks, writers, music piracy, and much, much more.  The barbs have a right-wing tone to them, but I think a more accurate adjective would be “Luddite”.

    I liked the critters.  In addition to the main characters encountered in Alice In Wonderland, the authors showcase an interesting menagerie of Sparrowheads, Goblins (sometimes called Gremlins), Gobliguanas (sometimes called Iguoblins), Hobblits, and even Musical Bars.

    There are music nods to Poison and Britney Spears (how’s that for an odd combination?) and, having taken two years of Mandarin Chinese myself, I enjoyed it getting a brief mention.  I would point out, however, that if you are ever in Hong Kong, and wish to communicate with the locals, it would be best to try Cantonese instead.

    The ending is logical, reasonably exciting, although not very twisty.  I liked the way the “technological outage” was resolved, and think a follow-up novel about that could be quite interesting.  The Missing Link is a standalone novel, and I don't think it's part of any series.  If the title references anything in the story, I missed it.

Kewlest New Word ...

Goblobotomy (n.) : removing the prefrontal lobe of a goblin’s brain  (a made-up word, and way-kewl.)

Excerpts...

    “You should be angry.  The capitalist world is using up the environment like toilet paper.”  He dropped his gaze to the turd which was appropriately swallowing Molly’s foot.  “And, hey, come to think of it, toilet paper kills trees.  We should all use leaves.”

    Molly’s face was flooding in bright red streaks.  “Leaves are from trees, you idiot!”  (loc. 1103)

    “The probability of your escape, human, is precisely 2.653 times less likely than being struck by lightning in the next twelve seconds.  This mathematical calculation is based upon not only the current sunshine and annual projected weather patterns, but also on the presence of the six malnourished, carbon-based life forms of pitiful socio-economic status that have just entered the room.  While you no doubt hope that these transients will prevent your immediate expiration, allow me to offer assurance that such an event will not occur.”  (loc. 6349)

Kindle Details…

    The Missing Link sells for $5.99 right now at Amazon.  As a team, Brandon Meyers and Bryan Pedas have another dozen or so e-books on Amazon, ranging in length from short stories to novelettes to novels, and in price from $1.99 to $5.99.  Both authors also have solo works available for your Kindle.  Their most recent effort as a writing team seems to have been in 2016.

“Sir, my dog eats bananas.  I’m pooping for my sexy friends.  Did you help?”  (loc. 2940 )

    There are a number of things to quibble about in The Missing Link, the first and most serious of which is the heavy overuse of cussing.  I counted 18 instances in the first 5%, and things didn’t let up after that.  A little cussing to set the tone is okay, but here it’ quickly becomes annoyingly distracting.

    I thought the storytelling was weak.  For most of the book, our three parties of protagonists wander around trying to figure out what’s going on, but not getting anywhere.  The story opens with Agnes Butterton destroying the Internet (so we are told), but she then disappears never to be seen again.  Twiddledee and Twiddledum serve no purpose except to make fun of Twitter.  It was funny the first time, it was old and irritating the fiftieth time.

    The target audience seemed to be Junior High and High School male readers who will titter nervously at all the cussing and wisecracks.  But this book would appeal to a wider audience if it had less foul language and more polishing.  OTOH, some reviewers criticized the writing itself as being overly simplistic, but if the target audience is indeed teens, then I think the writing style is appropriate.

    5 Stars.  Add 1½ stars if you’re a teenage boy looking for a fast, easy “beach novel” for a book report due in a couple days.  That was me once, and I probably would have enjoyed this way back then.

The Cyberiad Stories - Stanislaw Lem

    1967 (original Polish); 1974 (English translation); 295 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Humorous Sci-Fi; Anthology; Fantasy; Polish Literature.  Overall Rating : 5*/10.

    Let’s hear it for that great constructor, Trurl!  Hip-hip-hoo-huh?  Wait, you’ve never heard of Trurl?!

    He’s only the most fantastic constructor in the galaxy, that’s all.  Wait, you don’t know what a constructor is?!  Jeez, okay, let’s start with that.

    A constructor, well, constructs things.  Mostly machines that are programmed to do seemingly magical stuff, but sometimes other things like robots, demons, and computers.  Trurl is the best in the universe at this, which puts him in high demand by nearby (measured in light-years) kings who can afford such things.

    The second-most skilled constructor in the galaxy is Klapaucius, who just happens to be a neighbor of Trurl’s, and who might not agree about who’s the top constructor.  Sometimes the two of them collaborate on building a machine; sometimes they compete.  No matter.  The kings who send them requests for some coveted never-been-built-before machines are always impressed.

    Alas, those who wear the royal crowns are notoriously stingy.  Building a fabulous machine is one thing.  Collecting payment for it is quite another.

What’s To Like...

    The Cyberiad Stories (hereafter called “Cyberiad”) consists of 15 tales, of varying lengths, but mostly short stories that, with one exception, all feature either Trurl or a Trurl-plus-Klapaucius team  My personal favorites are:

05.) Trurl’s Electronic Bard

07.) The Dragons of Probability

11.) How Trurl and Klapaucius Created a Demon of the Second Kind to Defeat the Pirate Pugg

15.) From the Cyphroeroticon or Tales of Deviations, Superfixations, and Aberrations of the Heart

    #5 stands apart from all the rest.  Stanislaw Lem shows off his masterful wordplay, which is even more impressive since this is a translation from the original Polish.  My hat’s off to Michael Kandel, credited in the forward as the translator.  To boot, there are all sorts of made-up words in the book; I am completely mystified as to how one goes about translating such things.  The first excerpt below is an example of Stanislaw Lem's linguistic levity.

    It’s fun to see what machines are created by our hero(es) in each tale, and the cosmic, comic consequences (usually unintended) that ensue.  Some of these constructions are: a.) one that grants your every wish; b.) one that can create anything that starts with the letter “n”; c.) the world’s stupidest computer; d.) one that generates poetry; e.) one that can make a person “fall out of love”.

     Stanislaw Lem often incorporates “fancy” words from some technical field into the tale.  One time it’s chemistry, another time it’s physics, still another time it’s statistics.  Being a chemist, I loved it; although readers with a non-technical bent may find this a bit tedious.  Also, since I’m a crossword puzzle fanatic, I delighted in the brief nods to acrostics and anagrams, as well as the oft-used crossword puzzle phrase "lèse majesté".

    Since this is a collection of short stories, there’s no real “ending” to the book as a whole.  The cover art comes from Story #2, “Trurl’s Machine”, and the title reference is brief, coming at 17% Kindle.  There’s only one or two instances of cusswords, and no sex, booze, or drugs that I recall.

Kewlest New Word...

Benighted (adj.) : in a state of pitiful or contemptible intellectual or moral ignorance.

Others: Quoins (n., plural); Soughed (v.).

Excerpts...

    “Have it compose a poem – a poem about a haircut!  But lofty, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom!  Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter ‘s’!!”

    Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.

    She scissored short.  Sorely shorn,

    Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed.

    Silently scheming,

    Sightlessly seeking

    Some savage, spectacular suicide.  (loc. 594)

    “As this work too was totally ignored, I straightway wrote another; in it I presented all the possible hypotheses concerning the origin of the Universe – first, the opinion that it doesn’t exist at all, second, that it’s the result of all the mistakes made by a certain Demiurgon, who set out to create the world without the faintest idea of how to go about it, third, that the world is actually a hallucination of some Superbrain gone berserk in a manner infinite but bounded, four, that it is an asinine thought materialized as a joke, five, that it is matter that thinks, but with an abysmally low IQ.”  (loc. 3004)

Kindle Details...

     Amazon offers Cyberiad for $11.49 at present.  There are a slew of other e-books by Stanislaw Lem available, almost all of them science-fiction novels, in the $1.99-$11.99 price range.

Though it is easier not to believe in electrons than in dragons: electrons, at least, taken singly, won’t try to make a meal of you.  (loc. 1064)

    The wordplay is fantastic, but the storytelling is not.  All the stories seem to follow the same template, namely:

    a.) Trurl and/or Klapaucius visit some king on another planet.

    b.) The king poses a wish for some sort of machine.

    c.) Our wizards accept and magically build the machine in almost no time at all.

    d.) Lots of talk and/or trickery ensues.

    e.) the wizards prevail and live happily ever after, or at least until the next adventure.

    I got bored after a while.  So did other reviewers, who recommended reading Cyberiad in small amounts, presumably to minimize the “samey-ness” of the tales.

    It needs to be pointed out that these stories are technically not science fiction.  Our heroes could just as easily travel to a neighboring kingdom instead of a nearby planet, in which case this book would be shelved under “Fantasy”.

    Finally, the book is in sore need of another round of proofreading.  And some sort of unifying storyline. 

    5 Stars.  Collections of short stories are never my favorite genre, particularly those that are all written by the same author.  ANAICT, the rest of Stanislaw Lem’s  books are standard science-fiction novels.  I have one of them on my Kindle, Peace On Earth, and will probably read it in the near future in order to give Mr. Lem a fair shake.

When The Walls Fell - Monique Martin

    2013; 260 pages.  Book 2 (out of 11) of the “Out of Time” series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Time-Travel; Romance; Whodunit.  Overall Rating : 5*/10.

    Ah yes, Temporal Paradoxes.  They're the reason the CFTS ("Council For Temporal Studies") warns every one of its time travelers not to change anything when they journey back into the past.  You never know when you might change history through even the smallest act.

    But now the CFTS wants Professor Simon Cross to go back to 1906 San Francisco and stop someone from murdering a man named Victor Graham.  It seems that one of the current council members, Charles Graham, a descendant of Victor’s, has disappeared, and the council believes this was due to somebody creating a temporal paradox by killing Victor.

    Simon has his doubts about the mission.  The council may have ulterior motives, although what those might be is anybody’s guess.  So the CFTS switches to plan B.  They approach Elizabeth West, Simon’s student assistant, lover, and time-traveling sidekick, to try to talk her into doing the job.  They even add one more incentive: if Victor dies, it’s possible that Simon Cross himself will never be born.  How’s that for a temporal paradox?!

    By the way, didn't San Francisco get leveled by a deadly earthquake in 1906, with dozens of deadly fires and hundreds of people killed?

    Coincidence?  I have my doubts.

What’s To Like...

    When The Walls Fell is Book 2 in Monique Martin’s Out Of Time series.  I read the first book back in 2013, its review is here.  Both books are a clever blend of Time Travel and Romance genres, and here there’s a bit of a whodunit mixed in as well.  The council knows when Victor Graham is killed, but not who did the killing and why.

    I like that the time-travel is limited to requiring a special pocket watch and only when there’s a lunar eclipse; it prevents the chrono-hopping from being too convenient.  The Romance element centers around Simon and Elizabeth patching things up after a lovers’ spat.

    The writing style is what I call “storytelling” mode: the emphasis is on moving the plot along without getting bogged down with long descriptions or character depths.  Yet the 1906 setting is still portrayed well; and Elizabeth’s joy ride in an automobile from back then was a memorable experience.  I also liked Monique Martin’s habit of making up words and phrases: “physics-y”, “Jeevesy”, “rococo gone loco”, “great googley moogley”, et. al.  It takes a certain confidence to coin your own expressions in a novel, and here I felt it fit in nicely.

    I thought the book was well-researched for its time period.  Madame Blavatsky gets a brief nod; as does Rachmaninoff.  There’s even a smidgen of Chinese worked into the story, plus a brief discourse about the serious topic of racism, which I thought was quite timely (no pun intended).

     The ending was a mixed bag.  A couple plot twists crop up to challenge our heroes, including a clever one that I didn't see coming for the baddie.  Yet the resolution of the main thread, Victor’s demise, while certainly twisty, didn’t feel very exciting.  Overall, I was expecting Simon and Elizabeth to face bigger challenges than what went down.

Kewlest New Word...

Cheviot (n., but an adj. here?) : the wool or tweed cloth obtained from the Cheviot sheep.

Others: Fatuous (adj.).

Excerpts...

    “She’s found some psychic.  Madame Palianko or Petroika or something equally Russian.  You see my wife’s foibles aren’t just limited to her taste in music.  They’ve somehow managed to venture into the Other World.”

    “Twaddle,” Wentworth said between puffs.

    “Caroline will be seeing spirits for weeks,” Gardiner said, rolling his eyes again.  “Last time we had a medium over she was convinced the ghost of her Uncle Merryweather was trapped in the credenza.”   (loc. 5411.  All locations refer to the three-book bundle from which I read this book)

    “I hate that we can’t change things, and yet, I’m kind of afraid I did.”

    Simon’s eyes narrowed.  “Elizabeth, what did you do?”

    “Nothing, maybe.  Or, maybe, I might have said something that’s sort of responsible for the beginnings of the inklings of the founding of the Temporal Council and the invention of the time traveling watch.”

    “I was gone two hours.”

    She shrugged.  “It was an interesting two hours.”  (loc. 7091)

Kindle Details...

    When The Walls Fell sells for $3.99 at Amazon.  The first book in the series, Out Of Time, is free; the rest of the e-books in the series all sell for $4.99.  You can also purchase the Books 1-3 bundled together for only $4.99.  Monique Martin has a bunch of other books and series available for your kindle, most of which are priced at $3.99, plus a couple of Christmas novellas for $2.99 apiece.

“The Vichy just doesn’t soise like it used to.”  (loc. 4715)

    There are some nits to pick, but most of them are minor.  At one point some extremely potent components are smuggled into a jail and then used to quickly eat through the steel bars on the prison cell.  Ignoring the unlikelihood of successfully slipping these unnoticed past the guard, there’s also the issue of how incredibly fast-acting the concoction was.  I’m a chemist.  Trust me, this doesn’t work in real life.

    There’s only a smattering of cussing in the text, and a couple of rolls-in-the-hay, but nothing lurid.  Despite the tameness, some reviewers weren’t keen on these sex scenes being included.  They have a point, but hey, it’s clearly indicated that these are “Time Travel Romance” tales, and those of us who read them only for the Time Travel angle need to suck it up and tolerate the lovey-dovey stuff.

    Finally, for me the storyline seemed to be a bit “loose” in places.  For example, the séance was a high point in the story because it challenges the reader to try to figure out if it's supernatural or a scam.  The evidence was mixed – mysterious wet footprints versus the medium’s known origin.  But I don’t recall this plot thread ever being conclusively resolved.  I also never figured why Maxwell was at times referred to as “The Great Leslie”, nor whether Charles Graham eventually managed to “undisappear”.

    Full Disclosure: I read the last half of When The Walls Fell in a hospital waiting room, so it’s entirely possible that the answers to these plot threads were there, and that I was just too distracted to grasp them.

    5 Stars.  Add 1½ stars if you like the idea of mixing Romance with a Time Travel tale.  Methinks it's an acquired taste that I still haven't gotten used to.

Hokas Pokas - Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson

   2000; 278 pages.  New Authors? : No, and No.  Genre : Classic Science Fiction; Anthology; Humor; YA.  Overall Rating : 5*/10.

    The book cover picture tells you all you need to know to understand Hokas.  They’re teddy bears on steroids.  They’re Ewoks with panache.  They’re charismatic and cuddly.  Well, I’m not too sure about the “cuddly” part, but by nature they’re friends with almost everybody they meet, and can drink all other species under the table.  Hokas are also avid readers, and are especially partial to the classics and anything that has to do with history.

     But they’re extremely impressionable, and routinely become completely immersed in role-playing according to whatever Terran tale they’ve last been exposed to.  If you gave them a Harry Potter book or movie, the next thing you know, they’d all be waving wands and trying to fly around on brooms.  If they're taught about Columbus, they’re apt to build a couple wooden ships and go sailing over the oceans on their home planet of Toka, hoping to discover new lands.

    So care must be taken as to exactly what sort of Earthly culture one might expose the Hokas to.  If you let them read up on Genghis Khan, the resulting role-playing could be deadly.  If they are taught about Napoleon, they might break off into the British side and the French side and civil war might erupt, all in the spirit of pretending.

    Which is what that book cover is all about.

What’s To Like...

    Hokas Pokas! is a collection of three stories previously published in Sci-Fi/Fantasy magazines.  They’re of unequal length (the final tale takes up 2/3 of the book) and are:

    1.)  Full Pack  (pg. 1)

    2.)  The Napoleon Crime  (pg. 37)

    3.)  Star Prince Charlie  (pg. 99)

 Each story features the Hokas’ take-off of some book or historical situation.  “Full Pack” uses Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Books.  “The Napoleon Crime” taps into both Lord of the Rings and the 1800’s military campaign in Spain pitting Napoleon against Lord Nelson.  “Star Prince Charlie” loosely follows the Scottish uprising led by Charles Edward Stuart, aka “Bonnie Prince Charlie”.  I’m both a bookaholic and a history buff, so the book's genres was a nice fit for me.

    The third tale is the only one with chapters, and Gordon R. Dickson and Poul Anderson title them to give some other authors.  It’s possible that all 17 chapter titles do this, but some of the ones I recognized were Kidnapped, Fahrenheit 451, Stranger in a Strange Land, The Redheaded League, The Return of the Native, The Prince, and an earlier Hoka anthology by Anderson and Dickson, Earthman’s Burden.

     I think the target audience is YA boys since there’s not a hint of romance in any of the stories.  There is a small amount of cussing, and some alcohol gets consumed, but but this is mostly incidental.  I liked one of the Hokas’ quaint version of a cussword they’d recently learned, “damme”.  YA-oriented or not, the authors also manage to work in several neat, obscure vocabulary words; they're listed in the next section.

    I chuckled at the reference to “Lemuria”, a mythical lost continent aka as “Mu”.  The riddle contest in Star Prince Charlie was a neat take-off on some classic posers, and there’s a modicum of French, Spanish, and German vocabulary worked into The Napoleon Crime.  I thought the “five feats of the Prince” (on page 130) was a quite clever plot device.

    I wasn’t impressed with the way the first two stories ended.  Both felt contrived and hasty to me, but maybe that’s a function of being written as short stories in a magazine.  The Star Prince Charlie ending was better; it at least had a worthy moral to it: Freedom wins, as does the Common Man.

Kewlest New Word  ...

Sophont (n.) : a being with a base reasoning capacity equivalent to, or greater than that of a human being.

Others : Chivvy (v.), Cozen (v.), Calefaction (n.).

Excerpts...

    “Ouch!” howled Heragli, regaining full consciousness.  “What the sputz?  Get the snrrowl off me!  Leggo, you illegitimate forsaken object of an origin which the compilers of Leviticus would not have approved!  Wrowrrl!”  And he made frantic efforts to reach over his shoulder.

    “Striped killer!” squeaked Bagheera joyously.  “Hunter of helpless frogs!  Lame Thief of the Waingunga!  Take that!  And that!”

    “What’re you talking about?  Never ate a frog in m’ life.”  (pg. 34)

  “Not only is yakavarsh an excellent means of self-defense, Prince; it is in truth an art, yes, a philosophy, a way of life.  Consider the lovely curve as a body soars through the air!  Create an infinity symbol when you elegantly dislocate his arm!  See a gateway to eternity in the angle of his broken neck!”  (pg. 172)

 “It’s enough to make a paranoid out of a saint.”  (pg. 49)

    A great YA Fantasy series is one that entertains both adults and YA’s.  Examples are Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and His Dark Materials.  This was my third Hokas book, and unfortunately, none of them are in that category.  I’m pretty sure I would’ve enjoyed Hokas Pokas! when I was in junior high.  But now, the plots seem simplistic, the resolutions forced, and the wit repetitive.

    It must be kept in mind that Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson originally wrote these stories for Sci-Fi/Fantasy magazines, whose readership was mostly young boys, and just like “professional wrestling”, they should be judged by their YA standards.

    Both Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson were prolific science fiction writers.  The total number of Hoka short stories is less than 10, and the fact that neither author tried to develop the Hoka universe into a long-term series seems noteworthy.  I’m guessing that the Hokas occasionally garnered them a few extra bucks from the magazines, but I doubt either one of them wants their careers to be defined by Hokas.

    5 Stars.  Add 2 stars if you're in the target audience; you’ll likely find these stories hilarious.  And even if you’re an adult, you can still build your vocabulary, learn a couple foreign phrases, get acquainted with some classic novels, and pick up some interesting history tidbits.