The Devil Colony - James Rollins

   1982; 605 pages (or 647 pages if the short story is included).  New Author? : No.  Book 7 (out of 18) in the “Sigma Force” series.  Genres: Thriller-Suspense; Action-Adventure.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    It’s a major archaeological discovery!  An Indian burial site, hidden away in a cave in the mountains of Utah.

 

    Maggie Grantham and Hank Kanosh, a pair of professors from nearby Brigham Young University, have been dispatched to do the first inspection of the burial ground.  Professor Kanosh is a historian and a member of the Shoshone tribe.  Including him in the excavation will hopefully quell any protests by Native Americans in the area about desecrating their dead.  So will assigning a detachment from the National Guard to the group.

 

    Cross your fingers, guys.  WAHYA, a militant Native American rights group and already known for carrying out headline-grabbing acts of defiance, will almost certainly have something planned against those who would violate a Native American graveyard.  Plus there’s the Ute curse.

 

    That tribe has a legend which says that if anyone enters a sacred burial area in these parts, they must be killed immediately.  Because if they somehow manage to leave the chamber, the world will come to an end.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Devil Colony is a “save the world” thriller that finds Painter Crowe’s Sigma team traipsing all over the globe trying to figure out what’s going on geologically, while at the same time trying not to get killed by the potently secretive group of bad guys known as "The Guild".  Painter himself gets more involved than usual in the case when he learns that his niece Kai is one of the WAHYA operatives.  Meanwhile, Sigma’s operations chief, Grayson Pierce, finds it difficult to focus on saving the Earth while simultaneously attending to his parents’ plight: his father is succumbing to dementia.

 

    Once again, I was in awe of the number of disparate topics that James Rollins weaves into the complex-yet-coherent storyline: the Anasazi, Iceland, Meriwether Lewis, Mormon historical lore, nanotechnology, Yellowstone, Solomon’s Temple, Fort Knox, the Great Seal of the United States, and many more.  I also liked very much that the main baddie is suitably resourceful when carrying out skullduggery against our heroes.

 

    It was fun to learn about a skeleton called “the Kennewick Man”, since I’ve made several business trips to that town in Washington.  There’s a bunch of French phrases in the text which is always a treat for me, and a smidgen of Native American dialects to boot.  The reader even learns a bit of mild Icelandic cussing (see below).

 

    The pacing is fast and furious, like every Action-Thriller should be.  The basic story is 597 pages long, and is divided into 44 chapters plus a prologue.  The chapters usually are introduced with locations, dates, and times, which is useful when trying to remember who is where and doing what.

 

    There’s a bonus short story, 38 pages long, tacked on at the back of the book, and featuring Seichan, a professional assassin and recent addition to the Sigma Force group.  Both tales also come with James Rollins’ trademark “Truth or Fiction” afterword, which I very much appreciate.

 

    The ending is spectacular with a favorable outcome in doubt down to literally the last second.  Humanity is saved (well, you knew that would happen), although The Guild is still alive and well.  The last chapter is an Epilogue with a couple of heartwarming revelations about some of the presumed dead.  Things close with a dazzling Plot Reveal in a six-word last sentence.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.5*/5, based on 4,011 ratings and 974 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.86*/5, based on 26,982 ratings and 1,329 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

    Fjandinn (n.) : the devil (Icelandic).

    Others: “what the fjandanum” (phrase, half Icelandic).

 

Excerpts...

    Ryan now understood why they were called lava bombs.

    One sailed past overhead, raining flaming ash.  Cinders burned his cheeks, his exposed arms, reminding Ryan all too well that his vehicle had no roof.

    He ignored the pain and focused on the road ahead.  The Jeep bucked and rocked down the steep, rocky trail.  His left fender crumpled against an outcropping, shattering the headlamp on that side.  The Jeep lifted.  For a moment he swore he was driving on a single wheel, like a half-ton ballerina.  (pg. 207)

 

    Kai stared at a thin pall of dust retreating across the badlands.  Painter and the others had wasted no time, gathering gear and flying off in the rented SUV, even taking the dog.

    But not her.

    Earlier, she’d reined in her anger, knowing it would do her no good.  Bitterness still burned like coal in her gut.  She’d been here at the start of all this mess.  She deserved to see it through to the end.  They kept saying that she had to bear the consequences of her actions like a woman, yet still treated her like a child.  (pg. 276)

 

Kowalski plus fireworks.  Not a good combination.  (pg. 563)

    There’s very little to gripe about in The Devil Colony.  The cussing is surprisingly sparse; I counted just six instances in the first 20% of the book.  Later, several f-bombs appear, plus a pair of references to genitalia.

 

    I only noted one miscue: sheered/sheared, which mean someone did a topnotch job of editing.  And some of the “Mormon history beliefs” used as keys to solving various conundrums in the tale are shaky at best, with the author admitting that in the Afterword.  But they contribute to the fascinating storyline, so all’s well that ends well.

 

    This was the seventh book I’ve read in the Sigma Force series.  I have high expectations each time I begin one, and I’ve never yet been disappointed.  The plotlines are complex, the world-building and character development are great, and the storytelling is outstanding.  No wonder James Rollins is my favorite Action-Thriller writer.

 

    9 Stars.  Oh yeah, one last thing.  When’s the last time you read a story where a pod of killer whales (orcas) had a life-saving experience?

Beyond The Ice Limit - Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

   2016; 371 pages.  Book 4 (out of 5) in the “Gideon Crew” series.  New Authors? : No.  Genres : Thriller; Suspense; Save The World.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

 

    Eli Glinn has a score to settle.  With a meteorite.

 

    Five years ago the two of them crossed paths and the meteorite won.  It sank Eli’s boat, and more than a hundred people perished.  Eli was one of the survivors.

 

    You probably visualize a big blazing rock falling from the sky and slamming into the boat, but that’s not the way it happened.  Eli had hauled it up from the bottom of the ocean and stowed it in his ship.  When it slipped from its cradle, it caused an explosion and sank again to the bottom of the sea.

 

    Eli is going back to destroy it.  He’s not leaving anything to chance—he’s going to blow it up with a nuclear bomb he’s acquired.  He just needs to find someone who knows how to set up, and set off, an atomic bomb when it’s two miles deep in salt water.

 

    Hello, Gideon Crew.

 

What’s To Like...

    Beyond The Ice Limit is the penultimate book in Preston & Child’s Gideon Crew series, as well as the sequel to one of their other standalone thrillers, The Ice Limit.  As they mention in a short section titled “A Note to Our Readers”, they wrote this as a standalone story, which is important, since I hadn’t read The Ice Limit..

 

    The main storyline is whether Glinn, aided by Gideon, will carry out his mission to destroy the meteorite.  Sounds straightforward and easy, right?  Nope.  Things rapidly get more complicated.  In the five years that have passed since Encounter #1, the alien rock seems to have taken root and grown into a huge, treelike monstrosity.  Is it alive?  Is it sentient?  Is it a plant, an animal, or a machine?  Is it capable of communicating?  And perhaps most importantly, can it defend itself?

 

    The “human” plot threads are equally complex.  When crew members start dying, there is understandably more than a little discontent among their ranks., especially when Glinn seems determined to continue on regardless of how many of the rank-and-file members perish.  And since the whole excursion is a hush-hush affair, national navies cannot be called upon for support.

 

    I liked the “whale-speak” angle; it is a fascinating take on communicating with them.  There was also an “Alien” moment, if you remember that flick, and it scared me just as much this time around as it did when I watched the movie.  The titular “Ice Limit” is explained early on.  And Gideon will remember the phrase “let me touch your face” for the rest of his life.

 

    The ending is over-the-top, which is okay in a Thriller-genre tale.  It wasn’t particularly twisty, but the world is saved, thanks to Gideon’s valor, and he survives despite his computer simulation predicting his demise.  I don’t think a sequel will be penned, but there’s already an additional book in Gideon’s own series after this.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

    Stochastic (adj.) : randomly determined.

    Others: Rugose (adj.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.5*/5 based on 6,244 ratings and 1,024 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.37*/5 based on 1,743 ratings and 183 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “Four months ago, back when Garza first walked up to my fishing spot on Chihuahueños Creek and offered me a hundred thousand dollars for a week’s work, stealing the plans for some new kind of weapon off a defecting Chinese scientist—it was really this moment, this job, that you had in mind.”

    Glinn nodded.

    “And you want to use the nuke to kill a gigantic alien plant that is supposedly growing on the bottom of the ocean.”

    “In a nutshell.”

    “Forget it.”

    “Gideon,” said Glinn, “we’ve been through this tiresome dance several times before: your heated refusals, your storming out, and then your eventual return once you’ve thought it through.  Can we please skip all that?”  (pg. 19)

 

    “If there was no glitch, then obviously there was some sort of delay in the transmission, some kind of time lag.”

    “No delay.”

    “Come on.  What are you saying?”

    “What your hydrophone picked up was a direct acoustic sound coming through the water, at that moment.”

    “Impossible.”

    A shrug from Prothero, some scratching of his arm.

    “So you’re saying a dead person spoke,” Gideon pressed on.

    “All I’m saying is, there was no glitch.”

    “Jesus Christ, of course there was a glitch!”

    “Ignorance combined with vehemence doesn’t make it so.”  (pg. 132)

 

“Dr. McFarlane . . . is going to be our very own Cassandra.”  (pg. 213)

    I counted 13 cusswords in the first 20% of the book, which is reasonable for a Thriller novel, plus one roll-in-the-hay.  Amphetamines have a minor impact on the story, but drug-prudes will be happy to know they’re presented in a negative light.  That’s about it for R-rated stuff.

 

    I only saw two typos: image/imagine and Hcl/HCl.  That second one will only bug readers who are also chemists by trade, which includes me.

 

    My biggest issue was the pacing, which is a rare quibble for a Preston-&-Child novel.  The first quarter of the book, roughly 100 pages, just plods along as Gideon gets extensive training in properly manipulating a DSV (Deep Submergence Vehicle).  It got tiresome, but once that gets out of the way, the pace picks up nicely, and action abounds.

 

    Beyond The Ice Limit had lots of thrills to keep your interest, lots of scientific issues to contemplate, and even a bit of romance for the ladies.  I wouldn’t call it one of Preston & Child’s top novels, but it did meet my expectations for a Gideon Crew tale.

 

    7½ Stars.  Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child collaborate on at least three Thriller series: Agent Pendergast, Nora Kelly, and Gideon Crew.  Of those, the latter one is the only one that doesn’t blow me away.  Its most recent book, The Pharaoh Key, was published in 2018, six years ago.  Maybe Gideon Crew doesn’t blow Preston and Child away either.

The Judas Strain - James Rollins

   2007; 668 pages.  Book 4 (out of 16) in the Sigma Force series.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Action-Adventure; Save The World.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    Off the Sumatran coast, an oceanographic team, trying to figure out why eighty dolphins recently beached themselves on nearby Java, suddenly finds the sea around them has turned milky.  It dawns on the scientists that this could be a sign of a plague starting to emerge, but they realize this just a little bit too slowly.

 

    In Venice, certain people are willing to pay a large amount of money for a small Egyptian obelisk currently residing in a Vatican vault.  Sadly, for the local petty thief who swipes it for them, they’re also willing to kill for it.

 

    In Washington DC, the black-ops organization, Sigma Force, has just become aware that they may be suffering internal security leaks.  It falls to Director Painter Crowe to go mole-hunting, and we’re not talking about the four-footed variety.

 

    Director Crowe elects to have Sigma Force investigate the  Sumatran and Venetian incidents as well.  The manpower available for this is limited, but it should be sufficient as long as things don’t get out of hand at any of the three locations.

 

    But what happens, though, if things get out of hand at all three locations?

 

What’s To Like...

    In The Judas Strain, Sigma Force once again finds itself pitted against the shadowy, ultra-evil, ultra-effective bad guys known as “The Guild”.  The book follows the three storylines listed above, the main one being the threat of a worldwide plague, but somehow, this jumping from one storyline to another does not get confusing and allows James Rollins to spin a tale that has oodles of action and no slow spots.

 

    We visit a bunch of exotic settings throughout Asia and Europe, and James Rollins makes it feel like you’re right there alongside our heroes.  There’s a neat “is it natural or supernatural” aspect to the quest, a riddle-solving scavenger hunt, and of course, a “save-the-world” challenge to overcome, plus a tie-in to the historical past, in this case, Marco Polo's journey to the Far East and back again.  Sigma Force team members Monk and Kowalski both play major roles here; they’re probably my favorite characters in this series, due to their wit and snarkiness.

 

    A number of language snippets get worked into the text; so we treated to a smattering of Malaysian (including “Iblis” which is apparently a cussword), Hindi (Namaste!), Italian, Turkish, and Cambodian.  The book’s title is what the newly-emerging plague is dubbed.  I liked the brief mention of “durian” fruit; I had an opportunity to taste one on a business trip to the Far East long ago.  Tuk-tuks are also present; I encountered those on the same trip.

 

    The ending is exciting, over-the-top (which is okay in an Action-Adventure tale), and replete with convenient timing and clever twists.  The plague threat is dealt with and the Guild’s evil plans are thwarted.  One plot thread remains open – Monk’s whereabouts – but since I’m not reading this series in order, I know how that turns out.  The final scene in the book left a lump in my throat.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.6/5 based on 1,397 ratings and 578 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.16/5 based on 31,535 ratings and 1,332 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “Inside the ant, the fluke controls the insect’s nerve centers, changes its behavior.  Specifically, whenever the sun sets, the fluke compels the ant to climb a blade of grass, lock its mandible, and wait to be eaten by a grazing cow.  If not eaten, the ant returns to its nest at sunrise—only to repeat the same thing again the next night.  The fluke literally drives the ant like its own little car.”  (pg. 256)

 

    “Is that soft-shell crab?” he asked, leaning closer for a whiff.  The skewer speared something meaty with jointed legs, blackened and curled by fire.

    The woman nodded her head vigorously, smiling broadly at his interest.  She spoke rapidly in Khmer.

    Seichan stepped to Kowalski’s side, placing a hand on his shoulder.  “It’s fried tarantula. Very popular for breakfast in Cambodia.”

    Kowalski shuddered and backed away.  “Thanks.  I’ll stick with an Egg McMuffin.”  (pg. 531)

 

“Why do people keep trying to blow me up?”  (pg. 624)

    There are a couple nits to pick.  I noted two typos in the book: aid/aide and course/coarse.  That would be quite good for a self-published effort by an Indie author, but hey, this was a mass-market paperback.

 

    There’s a moderate amount of cussing (18 in the first 20%), including at least one f-bomb.  That’s acceptable for a gritty thriller like this, and that was about it for R-rated stuff.  Also, I’ve been trying to avoid pandemic-themed novels during this Covid crisis, and it really should've dawned on me that the book's title is plague-related.  Lastly, and leastly, the tiger shark dies.  Yeah, they’re not as cute and cuddly as a kitten, but still...

 

    Overall, I found this book to be a long, quick, easy-to-follow page-turning read.  I expect any Sigma Force book to keep me entertained with lots of thrills and spills, and that’s exactly what The Judas Strain did.

 

    8 Stars.  Be sure to read the “Author’s Note” at the very end of the book.  In it, James Rollins goes over the Marco Polo, Angelic Script, Plagues, Fauna, Cannibals & Pirates, Angkor, and Bacteria aspects of the story, revealing which parts are real and which are fictional.  Hint: almost all of it is factual.

The Last Oracle - James Rollins

    2008; 577 pages.  Book 5 (out of 14) in the “Sigma Force” series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Suspense; Thriller; Action-Adventure; Save-the-World.  Overall Rating : 10 */10.

    Someone just tried to kill Gray Pierce, the commander of the black ops unit “Sigma Force”.  In broad daylight.  In the middle of Washington D.C.  Right outside the Sigma Force headquarters, no less.

    It was only by an extraordinary stroke of luck that Gray survived.  Some homeless guy had just wandered up to him, looking for a handout, no doubt.  The sniper’s bullet wiped him out instead of Gray.  I suppose it’s theoretically possible the vagrant was the intended target, but why would a professional hitman have any reason to take out a homeless person?

    Nah, that's not very likely.  Somehow Gray’s cover has been blown and that needs to be fixed, and fast.  Just as soon as he attends to one small detail.

    Why was the panhandler carrying around a 2,000-year-old coin?

What’s To Like...

    The action starts immediately as The Last Oracle opens with a prologue set in 398 A.D. Greece during the final days of the famed Oracle at Delphi.  It never lets up after that as various members of Sigma Force combat the bad guys on a variety of fronts: Washington D.C., India, the Ural Mountains in Russia, and Pripyat, Ukraine, the latter being the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster better known as “Chernobyl”.

    As with any Sigma Force novel, there are multiple plotlines to follow.  Here, at least at the beginning, they are:  1.) Who shot the panhandler?  2.) Why was the panhandler trying to reach Gray?  3.) What’s with the skull?  4.) What’s so special about Sasha?  5.) Where’s Monk?  6.) What are the nefarious plans (dubbed “Operation Saturn” and “Operation Uranus”) that Savina and Nicolas have concocted?

    There's lots of intrigue, plenty of shooting, chases galore, and enough wit to keep things from getting too somber.  Monk, a Sigma Force member and apparently MIA at the end of the previous novel (I’m not reading this series in order), is initially way out in the boonies, and it was fun to watch how James Rollins works him back towards reuniting with his wife and old SF buddies.  I liked also that not all the Russian characters are “pure black”, nor are all of the Americans “pure white”.  Other writers of Thrillers should take heed of this.

    The book is well-researched.  I learned about Russia’s struggles with maintaining the safety of its nuclear power program.  I’d never heard of the Russian city of Chelyabinsk (just pronounce it “jellybeans”), despite it being Russia’s 9^th-largest city, and the sad fate of the nearby Lake Karachay.  There was an autism angle as well, including something called  “Autistic Savant Syndrome” which figured prominently in the tale.

    You’ll learn one or two Russian cuss phrases, plus a few snippets of the Romani (Gypsy) tongue.  There's only a few cases of cussing in English, and there are some neat drawings that are critical to the storyline.  James Rollins keeps meticulous track of the timing of each scene (down to the exact minute) , which really helped since the action is worldwide and the plot threads are often occurring simultaneously.  The 22 chapters, plus a Prologue and an Epilogue, average out to about 24 pages each, but those chapters have lots of scene shifts, so you’re never far from a good place to stop for the night.

Excerpts...

    Elizabeth fled with Kowalski down a crooked alley.  A sewage trench lined one side, reeking and foul.

    “Do you have another gun?” she asked.

    “You shoot?”

    “Skeet.  In college.”

    “Not much difference.  Targets just scream a bit more.”  (pg. 299)

    “She might survive, but in what state?  The augment, besides heightening her savant talent, also minimizes the symptoms of her autism.  Take the augment away, and you’ll be left with a child disconnected from the world.”

    “That’s better than being in the grave,” Kat said.

    “Is it?” McBride challenged her.  “Who are you to judge?  With the augment, she has a full life, as short as that might be.  Many children are born doomed from the start, given life sentences by medical conditions.  Leukemia, AIDS, birth defects.  Shouldn’t we seek to give them the best quality of life, rather than quantity?”

    Kat scowled.  “You only want to use her.”

    “Since when is mutual benefit such a bad thing?”  (pg. 376)

“Kowalski, help her.”  “But she shot me!”  (pg. 449)

        The ending is fantastic, climactic, twisty, and bittersweet.  The good guys may prevail, but it comes at a cost.  Chapter 22 is a general epilogue for the survivors of the adventure, and it’s followed by a shorter, more-focused “Epilogue” section that’ll leave a lump in your throat.  You don't see that often in an Action-Adventure story.

    Be sure to read the “Author’s Note To Readers: Truth or Fiction” (pgs. 573-577) at the end to learn what parts of the story are true and what parts were dreamed up by James Rollins.   You will be astounded.

    There’s not really anything to quibble about in The Last Oracle.  My expectations for any James Rollins book are high, and this one fully met them.

    10 Stars.  You can double-check some of the startling claims in the Truth-or-Fiction section  by going out to Wikipedia and reading about Chelyabinsk, Lake Karachay, and Chernobyl.  Wiki’s section about the latter was particularly eye-opening for me.  Yes, Chernobyl is today a ghost town  due to the radiation levels.  But a few people still live there, and, besides two general stores for those diehards, there's even (get this!) a hotel catering to tourists.

The Seventh Plague - James Rollins

   2016; 425 pages.  Book #12 (out of 12, but #13 is due out in December) in the Sigma Force series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Action-Thriller; Save-the-World (several times over).  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    After two years of being missing and presumed dead, Professor Harold McCabe, an archaeologist with an obsession with Moses and the ten plagues, has suddenly wandered out of the Sudanese desert and back into civilization.

    Well, “civilization” was in this case a small village on the edge of the desert, and Professor McCabe was at death’s door when the villagers found him.  They cared for him as best they could, but he died soon afterward.  His body was then shipped to Cairo and that’s when things turn strange.

    For starters, the cadaver is showing signs of partial mummification.  Even weirder is that the process appears to have been initiated by Professor McCabe himself.  Why in the world would he do such a thing?

    Then comes the final surprise.  The opening of the body is suspected of triggering some sort of outbreak of a lethal and unknown disease.  Everyone on the Egyptian forensics team who's been exposed to Professor McCabe's body is falling victim to some sort of virus, and a majority of them are dying from it.

     You could almost call it a plague.

What’s To Like...

    The Seventh Plague is your typical James Rollins “Sigma Force” tale. The action starts right away and really never lets up.  All your favorite Sigma Force peeps are here, plus some cameo appearances in one of the prologues by Mark Twain, Nikola Tesla, and Stanley, he of the famous “Dr. Livingstone, I presume": quote.  The settings are great, and run a climatic gamut: cold and wet England, cold and dry northern Canada (Ellesmere Island, and when's the last time you read a book with that setting?), hot and dry Sahara desert, and hot and wet Rwandan jungle.

    I liked the clever blend of religion with science, even if it did strain the limits of my believability at times.  And FWIW, the titular “Seventh Plague” is not of any particularly greater importance than the other nine; James Rollins attempts to explain all ten of them via naturally-occurring phenomena.  Michael Crichton would be proud.

    There are a bunch of neat drawings in the book; those were an unexpected treat and help the reader with the puzzle-solving.  The self-mummification is a nice twist, and I enjoyed the “elephant painters”.  Overall, The Seventh Plague felt more “sciency” than usual for a Sigma Force novel, and that’s a plus for me.

    The baddies aren’t exactly “gray”, but neither are any of them pitch black.  All of the main ones have a redeeming quality or two, and some of them live to fight another day.

    Everything builds to an exciting, if somewhat un-twisty, two-location ending,  I liked the accompanying double (or even triple) epilogue(s) as well.  And the “Truth or Fiction” afterword by James Rollins is way-kewl.  This is a standalone novel, as well as part of a series

Excerpts...

    “If nothing else,” she said, “I could use a tall pint.  Maybe two.  To help settle the nerves.”

    She offered him a small smile, which he matched.

    “Since it’s for medicinal purposes,” he said, “the first round’s on me.  I am a doctor after all.”

    She looked askance at him.  “Of archaeology.”

    “Of bio-archaeology,” he reminded her.  “That’s almost as good as a medical doctor.”  (pg. 46)

    “Which path do we take? Esophagus or trachea?”

    Derek shifted his beam to the damaged left tonsil.  “It looks like there was more traffic in and out of the airway.”  He pointed out the evident trampling in the trachea compared to the esophagus.  “So I say we ignore Robert Frost and take the road most traveled.”

    Gray nodded.  “Let’s move out.”

    Only Kowalski seemed disgruntled by this decision.  ”Yeah, let’s go deeper into the belly of a demon-wrestling god.  How could that possibly go wrong?”  (pg. 201)

 “Elephants didn’t build this. … I don’t care how good they are at tool use.”  (pg. 341)

    There are a couple quibbles.  Once again, the puzzles to be solved are incredible abstruse, but our Mensa-minded heroes seem to easily cut through them.  I kept rolling my eyes each time they sussed out another conundrum, but it has to be said, it’s entertaining as all get out.

    Ditto for the ending.  It’s very exciting, yet somewhat predictable.  I mean, really now, what do you expect will happen when you have a herd of wild elephants standing around, at your beck and call?

    But I pick at nits.  James Rollins writes action-thrillers, not police procedurals.  The Seventh Plague delivers exactly what one expects from Rollins, and there's no indication that he’s getting tired of researching and writing these Sigma Force novels.  That means I’ll be on the look-out for the next one in the series, The Demon Crown, due out on December 5^th.

    8½ Stars.  Subtract ½ Star if you’re the type of reader who just has to solve the puzzles in books like this before the heroes do.  You won’t.

The Japanese Devil Fish Girl - Robert Rankin

   2010; 373 pages.  Full Title : The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions.  Book #1 (out of 4) in “The Japanese Devil Fish Girl” series; Book #32 in Robert Rankin’s bibliography.  New Author? : No.  Genre : British Humor; Quest; Save The World.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    The traveling show called the “Most Meritorious Unnatural Attraction” needs a new attraction.  Their current one, a pickled Martian, is becoming flaky.  Literally.  Apparently keeping a Martian cadaver for long periods of time in a vat of formaldehyde causes it to start dropping off chunks of corpse.

    For George Fox, a roadie employed by Professor Coffin’s one-wagon itinerant freak show, and whose main charge is to keep the cauldron of stewed alien from spilling over as the Professor’s cart seems to find every pothole in the muddy road, life could be better.  But hey , no one ever said the carny’s life was a bed of roses.

    Still, the show must go on, and a replacement attraction must be found.  And wouldn’t it be great if George and the Professor could find the holy grail of traveling freak shows – The Japanese Devil Fish Girl?  But by definition, she’s probably in, well, Japan, and that’s a fair distance from our heroes in their plodding steam-powered show-wagon.

     Perhaps there is a faster means of transportation to be found in late-Victorian Era steampunk England.

What’s To Like...

    The setting for The Japanese Devil Fish Girl is 1895 London in an alternate, steampunk universe where H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds really did take place, with the Martians getting whupped, and the subsequent counterattack on Mars leading to our meeting the Venusians and Jupiterians.  Robert Rankin gives a nice synopsis of this alt-history on the flyleaf of the hardcover version, which is what I read.  But if you’re dealing the book in a different medium, he also works the backstory into the text itself.

    The chapters are short – 46 of them covering 373 pages.  The book is written in the author’s usual, somewhat rococo (for lack of a better term) writing style, which I happen to like, although admittedly it’s an acquired taste.  The sentence structures are contrived, and the descriptions often flowery.  But that’s a plus to me.

    Several historical figures make cameo appearances – Charles Babbage, Nikola Tesla, etc., and Adolph Hitler and Winston Churchill have somewhat larger roles.  But really, it’s all about George and the Professor, Darwin the monkey butler, and George’s love interest, Ada Lovelace, also a historical figure.

    Several of the Rankin iconic running gags are here – the Lady in a Straw Hat, Hugo Rune, and Dimac, although I was disappointed that Fangio was missing.  But there’s new stuff too – Lemuria, and the secret arts of Evil Breath and the Scent of Unknowing.  There’s even a smattering of French – a petit déjeuner and the belle epoque – and I always like that.

    As with any Robert Rankin novel, the emphasis is on wit and satire, not the storyline.  Absurdities abound, but this is why I'm a devoted reader of this author.

   

Excerpts...

    “I missed you at dinner.  Shared a table with a Russian research chemist named Orflekoff, and his grandson, Ivan.”

    George did not rise to that one.

    “Also an American false-limb manufacturer by the name of Fischel and his little son, Artie.”

    Nor that one.

    “And an upper-class Shakespearean actor called Ornott-Tobee and his brother, Toby.”

    “Indeed?” said George.  “And did you by any chance meet with the highly hyphenated Mr. Good-mind-to-give-you-a-punch-on-the-chin-if-you-do-not-stop-making-all-these-terrible-name-jokes, and his son, Ivor?”. ( pg. 111)

    “Quite a pretty thing,” said the professor.  “Assuming of course that it is not an instrument of torture.”

    “I like the champhered grommet mountings,” said George.

    “And I the flanged seals on drazy hoops,” said the professor, in an admiring tone.

    Both agreed that the burnished housings of the knurdling gears had much to recommend them, aesthetically speaking, yet mourned the lack of a rectifying valve that would have topped the whole off to perfection.  (pg. 241)

Kewlest New Word…

Sola Topi (n.) : An Indian sun hat made from the pith of the stems of sola plants.  (Google-Image it)

Others : Saveloy (n.); Verger (n.)

“Do the hokey-cokey and poke my ailing aunty with a mushroom on a stick.”  (pg. 347)

    I enjoyed The Japanese Devil Fish Girl, but have to agree with other reviewers, this is not going to be anyone's favorite Robert Rankin book.  For me, the book started out slow, and it was quite some time before I could fathom what the main plotline was.  But once our heroes get passage on the airship (doesn’t every steampunk novel have an airship?), the pace picks up nicely and stays that way for the rest of the story.

    The ending is kind of a stutter-step affair, and yet it works rather nicely.  The reader gets Robert Rankin’s interpretation of the Book of Revelation, and it’s a lot more interesting than most of the ones your local fundamentalist fanatics dream up.  There’s a deus ex machina involved, but I liked the way Robert Rankin handled this – he just flat-out admits it in the text.

    Overall, the plotline is more coherent than usual for a Robert Rankin tale.  Whether that’s a plus or a minus is a matter of each individual's literary taste.

    8 Stars.  The Japanese Devil Fish Girl is the Book One in a four-volume series, of which I’ve previously read the final installment, which is reviewed here.  You don’t have to read these in order, and I’m sure I’ll read the other two whenever they cross my path in a used-book store.