SPIDER - Robot Titans of Gotham

 

THE SPIDER : Robot Titans of Gotham

By Norvell Page

Baen Books

358 pgs

 

The Spider – Master of Men was one of the most popular pulp heroes of the late 1930s. All his adventures were over-the-top thrillers written by Norvell Page, himself a remarkable character. Born in Richmond, Virginia on July 6, 1904, Page grew up to become a journalist and between 1924 and 1934 he worked for such papers as the Cincinnati Post, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, New York Times and others. By the 1930s he had begun selling short pulp stories for various publishers and soon became known as the author of the majority of the adventures of the ruthless vigilante, The Spider. He, and other writers, wrote under the house name of Grant Stockbridge. Molded in the tradition of the Shadow and other masked avengers, Page’s innovations to The Spider series included a hideous disguise for the protagonist, Richard Wentworth, and a succession of super-science menaces for him to combat. Dying of a heart attack on Aug 14, 1961, Page lived long enough to see many of his Spider tales reprinted in paperback ala this particular volume. 

In 2007 and 2008, Baen Books published two collection of some of the most outlandish Spider yarns. In this, the second volume, they reproduced three of them starting with

“Satan’s Murder Machines” copyrighted 1939. In a frantically paced adventure, The Spider and his team, to include Nita Van Sloan, Ram Singh and Ronald Jackson, must find a way to stop a squad of giant armored robots wreaking havoc throughout New York City and then disappearing beneath the waters of the East River after their attacks. It’s a typical Page nail-biter, hardly giving the reader a chance to catch his/her breath as the Spider must constantly elude devilish traps set to ensnare by the master mind behind the rampaging metal men. 

The second adventure is “Death Reign of the Vampire King,” and is dated 1935. Moving out of his normal New York haunts, the Spider battles a maniac who controls a horde of vampire bats able to poison and kill a victim with a single bite. Calling himself the Bat Man, he flies aloft with a glider-like suit directing his vicious winged beast in a story that goes from Philadelphia to Chicago and eventually climaxes in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Easily one of the wildest paced Spider tales of them all.  

The third and final story in this volume was our least favorite, as it is not another Spider adventure, but a story featuring a lesser known pulp character, the Skull Killer. Jeffrey Fairchild is a well-to-do man about town who has two alter egos. The first being the old and kindly Doctor Skull, the other the effective nemesis of crime, and master of disguises, the Skull Killer. In “The Octopus” dated 1938, an evil madman employs a special purple ultra-violet ray to turn ordinary people into horribly mutated monsters who much have human blood to survive. Soon a large part of New York’s population is infected and the story becomes one convoluted back and forth story with the protagonist jumping from one identity to the other while dealing with pathetically disfigured victims. It’s one of those stories was happy to finish.  With two out of three good yarns put forth, this is a decent collection and we give it thumbs up.

THE SCAR OF AIMSIRE

 

THE SCAR OF AIMSIRE

Tales of Aimsire Book Two

By Scott Ladzinski

Available at Amazon

360 pages

The battle between good and evil continues in this, the second volume of the fantasy series, “Tales of Aimsire.” Book two starts directly after the events that transpired in book one…where wizard twins Rorie and Rayann were driven apart by Rorie’s succumbing to the dark forces manipulated by the entity known as the Rage Queen.

Now rogue magic wielders Fifth and Piramay pursue their sinister goals of conquest destroying entire towns and villages in their path to achieve the ultimate goal;  to unlock Lúth, the primordial One Power—a force imbued with the essence of life and light spoken into existence during the Dawn Light.

Now it is up to the Elf empire, and its warriors Ceridwyn, Rayann and Kali to stop them, if that is even possible. Scott Ladzinski weaves an incredible saga in a detailed world beyond imagination with noble heroes and the most twisted, barbaric monsters. It is a world fantasy readers have been waiting to explore further and he does not disappoint.

THE FIRE CONCERTO

 

THE FIRE CONCERTO

By Sarah Landenwich

Union Square & Co.

334 pgs

 

Rare are the stories that take hold of one’s imagination and don’t let go until the final page. This is one of them. The year is 1997 and thirty-year old Clara Bishop is a bartender in Austin, Texas living a quiet, happy life with her small circle of friends. What they don’t know is that ten years earlier she had been a rising star in the music world as a talented concert pianist. All of which came to an end when she was severely burned in a fire at her premier in Warsaw, Poland.

 

Clara blamed her teacher Madame Zofia Mikorska for the tragedy and retired from playing. As the book opens, Clara is made aware that Madame Mikorska has died and left her a unique item, an old world, beautifully crafted metronome; those wind-up devices used to keep a beat. Along with the item is a cryptic note hinting that there is a secret behind the metronome that only Clara can solve. Thus begins a complex and utterly fascinating adventure that leads back to the days of pre-World War II Poland and the death of that country’s greatest composer, Aleksander Starza. 

Sarah Landenwich, herself a musician, weaves a fast-paced puzzle that keeps jumping back and forth between the past and the present as Clara’s investigation begins to unravel the lives of several remarkably gifted women; all somehow connected with the death of Starza. But what are its implications for Clara? The story is addictive in that once begun, these characters draw us into their sad, seemingly lost lives. Their hunt for an ages-old solution somehow offers the possibility of genuine redemption for them all. 

“The Fire Concerto” is hands down one of the best mysteries we’ve read this year. Now someone go make it into a movie. Please.