Out of all the pulp authors I've read, Wellman is far and away my favorite. I think his voice is simply the most concise and concrete. This short paragraph perfectly illustrates his mastery of the language:
"Hok had thought only of getting away. The soldiers of Tlanis had thought only of returning to their city under the barrier. This difference of desire resulted in his escape and their destruction."
That is just an awesome paragraph.
Hok the Mighty, by Manly Wade Wellman
Hok the Mighty rules. That is a fact. He is the greatest guy to have ever existed. He was the first man to ever kiss a woman; he invented the bow; he invented the sword; he discovered Atlantis; and it is his exploits that became the basis for Hercules. No one that ever lived or ever will live will be half the man that Hok the Mighty is. If you took He-Man, Conan, Mr. T, Andre the Giant, Jesus, Rambo and Rocky, and mixed them together, the resulting mega-man would still be a frightened little school boy when compared to Hok the Mighty.
And it makes sense. I mean, just look at the name of the dude who created him: Manly Wade Wellman. The dude's name has MAN in it...TWICE. He's easily two times manlier than any other dude that doesn't have the word MAN in his name, not counting the name Manfred, because that name is never manly. As a matter of fact, if Hok the Mighty and Manly Wade Wellman were to ever meet IRL, the resulting magnitude of man-power would most likely create a vortex of testosterone that would suck every last ounce of estrogen out of every other living thing in the universe thus completely destroying all traces of feminine culture, thus rendering the universe the ultimate Man Cave in which dudes would just hang out, hunt, play video games, drink beer, and bonk things on the head.
The Wizards and the Warriors, by Hugh Cook
Started this last night, and I'm loving it. This is how you kick off an epic fantasy. It begins in the middle of the quest, after things are already interesting. Wow! What a novel idea. The writing is superb, the sense of humor is biting, and the genre send-ups are masterfully arranged.
And again I have to ask: why are most of his books OOP, and why aren't more people talking about him now? Fantasy is pretty big right now, and someone needs to be bigging-up Hugh Cook. Can't wait to read more.
About 1/2 way through Hugh Cook's The Wizards and the Warriors, and it continues to be incredibly awesome. I think I finally found my epic fantasy series. It contains some of the most amazing passages I've ever read in the genre. One passage in particular, describing a knight's ascent up a cliff to kill a dragon, is superb. Cook is a master of taking cliche and stereotypes and subverting them just enough to make them interesting without throwing away the power found in the archetypes and conventions. It appears that he has actually figured out a way to have his cake and eat it, too.
As the quest progresses, the questing heroes slowly and secretly reveal their own personal desires, and it is becoming clear that there isn't a good man in the bunch. As a matter of fact, some of them are more evil than the so-called villain.
The book is violent and angry, sad and melancholy, and exciting and funny. I'm so glad I discovered this.
The Wizards and the Warlords, by Hugh Cook
I had an absolute blast reading through this. It's been a very long time since I've been able to get into this kind of fantasy, and it feels really good to have found a book like this that I enjoy.
Cook's world and characters are fascinating. He sets up a fairly stereotypical setting, and populates it with your standard archetypes, and then, bit by bit, and layer by layer, he peels and chips away at things until he reveals characters, situations, motivations, and scenarios that play out unlike anything I've read before.
I also admired Cook's ability to juggle a dozen or so characters without relying on any predetermined villains or heroes. Each character possesses qualities of hero and villain. They are not driven by a desire to do good or to do bad, they are simply motivated by things that are important to them as people and their relationships with each other.
The plot does stall a bit towards the end, and I feel as though one entire portion of the book could have been left out entirely. However, the vast majority of everything Cook presents is so good and so much fun that it hardly even matters.
The Worm Ouroboros is interesting so far. I like parts of, and I don't like parts of it. However, I'm sticking with it because I've never really read anything quite like it. I guess you could say I'm sticking with it out of respect for how damn influential it has been, and continues to be. I can tell that it was a huge inspiration to Tolkien, Vance, and Gygax, the three pillars of what we today consider fantastic fiction. The Worm Ouroboros is the bedrock of the genre, and should probably be seen as the point at which things transitioned from myth and fairy-tales into a genre that more resembles fantasy as we think of it today. It's even quite different than Lord Dunsany's work, although I do prefer Dunsany's prose.
I'm giving up on The Worm Ouroboros. With each passing page I am finding fewer and fewer things to like about it. I'm just not a fan of the Jacobean style. I don't like super-long passages of dialog in which the characters tell the audience about everything, and, frankly, I was just finding myself bored. It's challenging in the way that Shakespeare is challenging - not in theme or plotting, but in simply having to decipher what the characters are saying, but then once you do you realize that they're not really saying or doing anything that great.
The greatness and complexity is found in the language and style that Eddison employs. If you like language for the sake of language, you'll probably love this book. I'm not that in love with language. I needed something more in terms of theme and plotting.
When I heard that the book was very difficult, I imagined it difficult in the same ways that Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition, or Michael Cisco's The Great Lover are difficult; these books are like puzzles, and the authors employ a cryptic style that adds to the theme and makes the puzzle interesting to figure out. The Worm Ouroboros isn't difficult like this, rather the difficulty is found in the dense, lyrical, and flowery language, and understanding the archaic words used like 'anon' and 'murther' and so on.
So The Worm Ouroboros is not for me.
I am devouring The Magician out of Manchuria, and it is absolutely delightful, weird, brazen, bizarre and hilarious. The Magician is a one-of-a-kind character: a fat, bloated, self-serving trickster who may or may not be a genius or a fool; and he's the protagonist of the story. While I can't say that it is as good as The Circus of Dr. Lao (but then again, what is?), it's almost on par with that masterpiece of the fantastic.
This morning I started reading The Orphan Palace, by Joe Pulver.
It's a work of weird fiction, and is experimental in style. It's written in a kind of half prose, half verse style, and it is a very dark story about a disturbed killer who may or may not be living out a story from the pages of a hardboiled pulp thriller. I picked it up because one of my favorite authors of experimental weird fiction, Michael Cisco, wrote the introduction, and Thomas Ligotti thinks Pulver is incredible. I consider that to be all the recommendation I need, and if anyone here reads Cisco or Ligotti I'm sure you'll know what I mean.
Anyhow, I'm really digging it so far. One problem I often have with this kind of fiction is that these stories are rarely from the POV of the most interesting character: the killer. The killer is almost always far more interesting than the detective/investigator, but too many authors are too scared to put themselves and their readers into the head of the bad guy, even though it would almost always make for a far more interesting story, both in terms of characterization and plot.
Pulver's stream of conscious style works perfectly for this road-trip-into-hell narrative, and the terse, threadbare style works wonders in conveying a sense of urgency and intimacy. I'm definitely going to be checking out more from Pulver in the future.
And speaking of Michael Cisco, he has a new book coming out soon:
http://chomupress.com/our-books/celebrant/
The Orphan Palace is really something special. There are so many amazing passages, and damn is it ever dark. I've commented before about how when I read Michael Cisco, I hear this very distinct voice in my head, somewhat similar to the brain in the box in the film City of Lost Children. I'm hearing that voice with Pulver's novel; it's a voice that speaks on a very primal level, one that taps into the very nerve system of myth and fiction.
The Orphan Palace continues to alternate between so far gone it's nigh incomprehensible, to so utterly cool it hurts my brain. And through it all it continues to be one of the most relentlessly unique and creative works of experimental fiction I've ever read. The combined use of prose and verse, and what each represents within the narrative, is masterful; it's a case of form and function working in perfect tandem.
It is also insanely weird and bizarre. There is this strange narrative current involving a series of hardboiled thrillers published by The Shadow Brothers that is slowly making it's way towards the surface of comprehension. The books are written by a number of different authors, and each has a different title, but all of the covers are the same and the stories are all almost identical. The main character - Cardigan, a serial killer on a rampage from the west coast to the east coast, trying to get back to the orphanage where he grew up so he can destroy it - always stays at a certain hotel chain, and rather than a Bible, the rooms are stocked with these crime novels.
It's also cool that Pulver mentions the Hounds of Tindalos and the black stars, but the novel is definitely not a work of mythos fiction.
So yeah - highly recommended.
The Orphan Palace is brilliant. One of the better written novels I've read, with a ton of experimentation and strange things going on. The half verse, half prose style works wonders in conveying the POV characters pathos, and his tale is one of extremes.
If you're into extreme fiction, experimental fiction, hardboiled thrillers, uber-dark weird fiction, serial killer stuff, or just the joys of the written language, I highly, highly recommend checking out Pulver's novel.
The Wind Through the Keyhole, by Stephen King
3.5 Stars
My second least favorite of the DT books, coming right after Wizard and Glass, which makes a lot of sense.
Basically, The Wind Through the Keyhole is two novellas framed by a short story set between WaG and Calla. I would have preferred if this book was simply a collection of Dark Tower short stories/novellas, without the framing device.
King has created a lot of myth in and around this world, and it could make for a very interesting series of anthologies, maybe even including stories written by other authors.
The two main stories in the book are pretty good, but not great. The story about young Roland is good, and sheds a little light on his eventual-relationship with Jake. The main part, the title story, is a basic fairy tale with some very cool parts, but it takes way too long to get good. It's all built on known tropes and conventions - as are all fairy tales - so there really isn't a reason to set this kind of stuff up in one written today. We - the readers - know all this stuff already, so get to the good parts faster.
Anyhow, it was nice visiting my old friends again. BTW, I think the DT-related short story in Everything's Eventual is better than this book, and that would have been a cool addition to a DT-themed short story collection.
"The Little Sisters of Eluria." Yeah, that was good stuff.Quoting D_Davis (view post)
I was tempted to buy this yesterday, but I also just kinda want to leave Roland and his friends to their series proper.
The Neverending Story (the first half), by Micheal Ende
I recently re-read the first half of Micheal Ende's The Neverending Story; this is the half that the first movie is based on, and it is remarkably better than the second half. It has been many, many years since I first read it, and I was curious as to how it would hold up, perhaps even a little nervous that it would be better left as a distant memory.
My fears were unfounded, and I might have liked it even more now. It is simply a wonderful fantasy tale full of adventure, metaphysical pondering, imagination, and overflowing with a love for adventure, belief, and creativity. It does an amazing job at showing how important it is for human beings to believe in things outside of our own limited reality; there is far more to the world than we can ever know, see, or hear, and through the power of belief, imagination, creativity, and mythology we can enter into special magical places.
My favorite part of the story is in the Spook City, when Atreyu comes face-to-face with the Gmork, the werewolf. Their verbal confrontation is masterfully portrayed, and I love the metatextual, metaphysical things revealed in their conversations. It's very much akin to Stephen King's The Dark Tower, or Michael Cisco's The Divinity Student in this arena. And my love for all three makes sense. I love stories about stories, and I love stories about the power of fiction and the relationship between the artist, the art, and the audience.
I am very glad that I returned to this narrative. It's just a great story. I only wish that the second half was as good. Maybe I would like it more, now, but somehow I doubt it, and, truth be told, I'd rather not chance it. As it stands, the first half of The Neverending Story is a timeless classic, a fantasy as strong as any I've ever read.
TOTALLY agree about the first half being much stronger than the second half. That was my major complaint after reading it a while back. The second half is so rambling and seemingly lacking focus that I struggled to maintain interest.
You read this more recently, too, right?
I remember really, really disliking the second half. It's like once the movie-part ended, it went down hill really fast.
I read genre fiction, but only a handful per year. I'm not nearly as devoted to it as you. I tend to read your posts in these threads, and copy down the books that sound interesting to me, but I love a wide variety of styles and genres, so it'll take me decades to get to some of your recommendations.Man - no one's reading any genre fiction around here. This thread has turned into the D_Davis blog.
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