skjam

Hi folks!

In an effort to drive more traffic to my review blog, SKJAM! Reviews, I'm hosting a giveaway of one of seven books.

http://www.skjam.com/2013/09/16/giveaway-autumn-giveaway-ends-september-30-2013/

Come on over and check it out!

If I Were You by L. Ron Hubbard

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Before L. Ron Hubbard got involved in...you know, he was a middling-good and prolific pulp author. The Golden Age Stories line is reprinting many of his stories in attractively designed paperbacks. This volume contains two short stories, , a preview of another, a glossary (really needed this time because of heavy circus slang) and a hagiography of Hubbard that does not mention...you know by name, just calling it "serious research." Hee. It's double-spaced in a largish typeface for easy reading.

The title story concerns a little person, "Little" Tom Little, who works as a circus midget, and then discovers a mystical method for bodyswapping with other people. He promptly decides to use this to swap with the tall, imposing ringmaster Hermann Schmidt. But Schmidt has troubles of his own, which could get Tom killed regardless of which body he's in!

There's a nice bit of foreshadowing early in the story, with what seems like random cruelty to Tom, but is actually a hint of what Schmidt's issues are. The lion phobia, on the other hand, was a bit too telegraphed. The payoff to that is a very exciting scene, mitigating the obviousness. There's a nice bit of ambiguity, too, in the motives of the Professor, who leaves Tom his books of magic.

The second story, "The Last Drop" is co-authored by the much better L. Sprague de Camp. A bartender foolishly creates a cocktail with some untested syrup from Borneo; growth and shrinking hijinks ensue. A fun story that at least waves at scientific plausibility as it goes by, in the form of the square-cube law. (The glossary explains it for the benefit of anyone who might have forgotten.)

While it's a handsome package, and the stories are fun, the book is thin on content for the price. I'd recommend looking for used copies at a steep discount, or checking it out from the library.



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A Planet of Your Own/The Beasts of Kohl by John Brunner

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Another fun Ace double.

A Planet of Your Own, first--Kynance Foy is a young woman from Earth who decided to go out and make her fortune among the stars...and failed. At the end of her rope, she's offered a job by the Zygra Corporation. A job that sounds too good to be true, despite the obvious hardships. But she's desperate, so sign she does. It isn't until she gets to the planet of Zygra that she discovers the true nature of the trap, but is it too late?

Good stuff: This is a rare mid-Sixties SF book with a competent female lead. Amusingly, towards the beginning she lists off traits that in bad fanfic would make her kind of Sueish (smart, multi-skilled and exotically beautiful) but it turns out that the further she gets from Earth, the more common these traits are, to the point that normal fifteen year olds are earning the equivalent of a doctorate.

The moment Kynance figures out what the trap is, she sets about systematically disarming it, using the skills she established earlier. And when male characters show up, they don't take over the story or assume control just because they're men. Kynance simply works them into her plan. And there isn't a shoehorned-in romance, either. Just a hint at the end that now that she's made her pile, Kynance might consider a relationship, possibly with one of the male characters.

Not so good stuff: Kynance's boss sexually harasses her as an added topping to his other slimy activities, just to reinforce that he's the bad guy here. There's the people calling a grown woman a "girl", and being surprised she's in the Zygra job (though the same character admits that a woman would be equally able to do it.) And the ending relies heavily on the legalistic version of technobabble.


The Beasts of Kohl is by John Rackham. Kohl is an aquatic lifeform that travels to other star systems, explores them, and sometimes brings back smart animals to serve it. (Thus the title.) But one day, Kohl's bipedal servant Rann asks a question that makes Kohl realize he isn't just a very intelligent animal, but a fully sapient being like Kohl itself. Since Kohl's ethics prevent it from enslaving true setitents, it decides to take Rann back to his home planet for a visit, so that Rann can make an informed choice about his life.

Joined by his female counterpart Rana (who has had a less wise master and is thus more emotional and unskilled), the great canine Gromahl and thehunting bird Virgal, Rann accompanies Kohl to a certain small blue planet. What none of the visitors realize is that quite some time has passed on that world, which has changed considerably. And in a single jam-packed day, Rann and Rana learn both good and ill about their home world and its inhabitants.

It's a fast-paced story, with some nice "outsiders looking at Earth culture" satire, but the latter half depends entirely too much on coincidence to speed things along. This easily could have been twice the length without spoiling the plot. There's some gender essentialism, and some readers may groan at the "nerdy guy gets the incredibly hot girlfriend" subplot.

Also, the story is implied to take place on Earth in "the near future" from 1966, so it's interesting to see what the author thinks would have changed, and what looks exactly like the Sixties.



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The Spider, Master of Men! #30: Green Globes of Death by Grant Stockbridge

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Another cracking adventure of the bloodthirsty hero known as the Spider.

The twist this time is that when last we and the Spider saw the Fly, that criminal had been skewered by a sword and fallen several stories into a river. If it hadn't killed him, the Fly certainly would have been horribly injured. So how is it that the Fly is walking around hale and hearty, and back to his old trick of massacre with robbery.

Surely this Fly must be an impostor. Or has the villain accomplished the impossible? Even the Spider knows moments of doubt.



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HeroMan volume 1 by Stan Lee

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


So, Stan Lee has been around a long time. Over the years, he's come up with a lot of ideas. Some were great, many were pretty good, some needed a bit more work to be viable, and a handful were truly awful So by now, Stan has a briefcase full of ideas of varying quality and every time he runs a bit short of lunch money, he opens up the briefcase and sells one of his spare ideas.

A couple of years back, Stan Lee sold a couple of ideas to the folks over in Japan. This is one of them.

It was an animated series, and this is a tie-in comic for fans of the show. Fans will quickly spot the usual Stan Lee touches: underdog teen hero, bullying jock, elderly relative who must be protected, Stan Lee cameo...plus the manga staples like an enormous robot controlled by a hot-blooded teenager, and a romantic interest who wears a tiny skirt even in the most inappropriate circumstances.

The combination works pretty well, but long-time fans will find much of the material very familiar. I'd recommend it mostly to junior high kids who will strongly idenify with Joey and HeroMan.



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The Case of the Missing Servant: A Vish Puri Mystery by Tarquin Hall

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Disclosure: I received this book as a Firstreads giveaway on the premise that I would review it.

This is the first of a series about Vish Puri, owner and operator of the Most Private Investigations office of New Dehli in India. He's already built a successful business, and bills himself as India's top private detective. While his bread-and-butter is investigating prospective bridegrooms in arranged marriages to determine if they're really suitable (and one of these investigations is a major subplot), he often has more interesting/dangerous cases.

In the present instance, a reform-minded lawyer's servant has gone missing, and the lawyer is being accused of murdering her to cover up an affair. Shortly after Vish Puri takes the case, someone tries to murder him. Can he and his agents figure out what's really going on?

There's lots of local color, including an extensive glossary, but how authentic the book is to the reality of India I will leave to other reviewers. The clash between ancient poverty and new money, the multiplicity of India's religions and languages, and the endemic corruption in the legal system all play strong roles in the story.

I should note that Vish Puri is extremely quirky in addition to being exotic to American and British readers, in much the same fashion as Hercule Poirot. This may come off as excessive to some readers. Also, there are what appear to be prophetic dreams (or heavily intutive ones), which may strike some as not "fair play."

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to fans of eccentric detectives.



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Weird Golf: 18 Tales of Fantastic, Horrific, Scientifically Impossible, and Morally Reprehensible Golf by Dave Donelson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Disclosure: I received this book through a Firstreads giveaway in the expectation that I would review it.

To make where I'm coming from clearer, I'm not a sports fan, and in specific not a golf fan. I've played just enough golf to know the game doesn't appeal to me as a player, and I don't believe I have ever watched an entire match on TV. However, I'm a big fan of "strange sports stories" which blend a real-life sport with fantastic elements.

As you might gather, this is a single-author anthology which is exclusively about golf. Thus, the changes are rung by introducing different unusual elements, not all impossible. It's double-spaced for easy reading.

The best single story is "Grand Slam", where a veteran golf writer (much like the author) realizes there's something more unusual than most about an up and coming golfer. The ending's very predictable, but the research is good.

Mr. Donelson appears to have been his own editor/proofreader, as there are a couple of "relies on spellchecker" errors.

And then there is the story "Superhero Grudge Match", in which Superman and Batman compete to join a pro-am golf tournatment. I was very surprised to not see a fanfic disclaimer, or an indication that Mr. Donelson got permission to use the characters for his book.

It really felt like the writer hadn't done the research on the comic book characters nearly as well as he'd researched Pebble Beach. The story references some current events that might have made the business pages, but the Batman and Robin combo used were clearly the ones from the 1960e TV series. The characterizations are closest to the Silver Age "World's Finest" comic books, in which Superman, Batman or both suddenly start acting dickishly for reasons given at the end of the story. Except that this time they're dickish for the sole purpose of winning a golf game.

Notably, though both heroes end up cheating during the match, neither of them uses the skills/powers that would allow them to be freakishly good at golf. As a comic book fanfic reader, I have to say it's not very good.

I would only recommend this book to people looking for a gift their golf-mad relative probably doesn't have already. It's a light read, suitable for rainy days and waiting for tee times.



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Tom Swift and His Ocean Airport, or, Foiling the Haargolanders by Victor Appleton

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This is much further along in the Tom Swift (Sr) series than my previous review, Tom Swift and his Motorboat. Tom is now the owner of a factory that produces his inventions, Ned is his business manager, Eradicate is now a full-time employee of the Swifts, and they've added the giant South American Koku to the team as Tom's bodyguard. Tom is also now married, although you can hardly tell. We don't learn the wife's name in this volume, she is never "on stage" and is mentioned only twice, once to establish that she exists, and once to let us know she's not going on the adventure. We hear a bit more about Mr. Damon's wife, who he keeps ditching to visit Tom.

Oh, the plot. One of Tom's old friends we (and Ned) have never heard of before has his plane forced down by a competitor in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Tom decides to avert any such future disaster by building a floating airport for emergency landings. About this time, a new engineer is employed by the Swift firm, a swarthy foreigner named Emil Gurg. Yeah. He's actually useful at first, since his home country of Haargoland just happens to have exactly the kind of wood Tom needs to make the airport feasible. But once it's actually built....

Ned comes off the best in this vclume. He correctly suspects Gurg from the start, and expresses a wish for Tom's new silent wireless transmitter to make a lot of money...so that he can give raises to their employees.

Tom means well, but sees nothing wrong with rearranging another country's government to suit his needs, as long as there's no violence. Gurg exploits this for all it's worth.

It's Eradicate and Koku that raise my hackles. They've become the "bickering sidekicks" so beloved of early 20th Century action stories, the comic relief characters that constantly fight, but secretly would lay down their lives for each other. Except that what they bicker about in this volume is which of them is more properly servile towards Tom. Rad had some dignity in the motorboat story, not so much here.

Between the ethnic stereotypes and the way Tom never learns his lesson about interfering in other countries' politics, I cannot recommend this book to anyone who isn't already a Tom Swift fan.



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Tom Swift And His Motor-boat by Victor Appleton II

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Another of the boys' adventure books from the early 20th Century I love so much. Young Tom acquires the motor-boat seen towards the end of the previous volume, repairs and improves it, and has a series of adventures on the local (very large) lake.

It illustrates how much the technology of gasoline motors has advanced in the intervening century--Tom and the other motorboat pilots must frequently tinker with the engines mid-race to get the best performance or prevent breakdowns.

The last quarter of the book sets up the airship that will be the focus of the next volume.

The character of Eradicate may come off as offensively stereotyped, and Tom shows some mild sexism when it comes to girls and motors. (The romantic interest gets better at it, but only because of his tutoring.) And towards the end, one character suddenly reveals he has more political power than he'd let on, with no foreshadowing.

But these are minor quibbles, and I think this book would be fine to share with a son, grandson or nephew.



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Dave Dashaway and His Hydroplane by Roy Rockwood

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A nifty book about a young fellow in the early days of aviation.



It's a fairly typical boys' adventure book of the time period; Dave is cleancut, honest, brave and naturally gifted at flying airships. His sidekick Hiram is also a jolly good fellow, and they're supported by honest older gentlemen. Only the villains have personality flaws.



In this second volume of the series, Dave is called in to assist in the recovery of a hydro-aeroplane, or as we would know it, a seaplane. Criminals have already figured out how to use this exciting new invention for evil, and Dave must nip it in the bud!



Perhaps the most interesting feature for the modern reader is the descriptions of flying the airplanes, very much a risky enterprise at the time.



Notably, Dave's adult mentor goes on an exciting adventure of his own, which we only learn the details of afterward. Thankfully, this method of keeping the grownup from hogging the action follows smoothly from the events of the previous volume.



Some readers may be put off by the heavy use of coincidence to make Dave's search easier, and the rather pat way everything works out in time for setting up the next volume.



Recommended for aviation buffs, boys from about ten to fifteen and people living in the Great Lakes area where the story takes place.



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