A Weird Old Short Comedy! "The Generous Usurer"

A little bonus post for you all this week...

I was looking at historical books on cheesemaking (don't ask) over at the Internet Archive, and I stumbled onto this little manuscript that is almost too strange to believe.

A Bad First Impression, But it Turns Around Quite a Bit! "Alien: The Cold Forge" Review

I didn't expect to review this book this week. I needed something to kill half an hour and I thought I'd give this book a look. The same friend who gave me that three-novel Alien omnibus gave me this book, too, and I hadn't opened it yet.

The funny thing is, despite the relatively bad first impression I got from the book, it did a few interesting things that are worth noticing! I kept turning pages, and ended up finishing the book pretty quickly.

I'm talking about Alien: The Cold Forge, by Alex White, published in 2018. The front cover says it's an "All New Story" and "An Original Novel," and aside from a couple of early-on member-berries (mentions of Van Leeuwen and Carter Burke), it's true.

Simpler, and Gamey, but with some Unique and Compelling Bits! "Tear of the Gods," by Raymond Feist

It's been a while since I did a Feist book review, and part of the reason is that this book is probably one of the weakest books in his bibliography. Tear of the Gods is the third novel in the "Riftwar Legacy" saga, written long after the characters in it were dead and gone in Feist's normal writing.

This book was published in 2000, and it's based on the plot of the game Return to Krondor, which was not as critically acclaimed in the CRPG world as Betrayal. The plot is simpler and feels a lot more like a game, with lots of little bits of action, many small combat spells thrown around, side quests galore, and a clear progression of the enemies, almost as if the "player" is leveling up.

At the same time, it's a fun read with some valuable and unique elements that shouldn't be ignored.

Brilliant, Witty, and Playful: The Tokyo Zodiac Murders

"Playful" isn't a word you usually connect to murder mysteries, except maybe in a sadistic, Jigsaw-kinda way, but for this book, I really mean it. Soji Shimada pops in twice to tell you to sit down and solve the mystery before you go on, and the solution is so clever and out there that you might never get it!

The Tokyo Zodiac Murders is a classic Japanese murder mystery from 1981. I read it in grad school maybe 15 years ago, and it's been hard to get a copy affordably until recently, since the book had such limited printings in English. Fortunately, a recent printing makes this book accessible at a relatively low price, which was just the opportunity I was waiting for.

Hot and Cold on Hodgson: Review of "The House on the Borderland"

Today's topic is The House on the Borderland, by William Hope Hodgson, published in 1908. I decided to read this book based on Lovecraft's evaluation of Hodgson in his "Supernatural Horror in Literature" essay. Lovecraft said that Hodgson's writing was "Of rather uneven stylistic quality, but vast occasional power in its suggestion of lurking worlds and beings behind the ordinary surface of life... perhaps second only to Algernon Blackwood in his serious treatment of unreality."

Further, Lovecraft called this book "Perhaps the greatest of all of Mr. Hodgson's works."

And, to be honest, I find myself agreeing with Lovecraft's evaluation, in both the positive and negative aspects.

A Fun Scientific What-If Story: Journey to the Interior of the Earth, by Jules Verne

There is more to Jules Verne's famous book about traveling into the Earth than I thought! This is what I learned when I went back to the second issue of Amazing Stories and saw the first part serialized there.

The original was published in French in 1864, then re-published in an expanded version in 1867. Then, the first English version was released in 1871, but here's the kicker: that first English version was drastically altered from what a straightforward translation would have been! The character names were changed, which may have been forgivable, but the structure of the story was actually pretty different, too. That "localized" English version was Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

More Detail, But More Repetition: The Gods of Mars Review!

I was flipping through a bunch of different stuff last weekend, trying to figure out what I wanted to read, when I realized I had read A Princess of Mars a while back, and hadn't gone any further than that!

So, I sat down with the second book in the Barsoom Saga, The Gods of Mars, and I think it was a little better than the first one, overall, though there were some tradeoffs.