This review originally appeared on Goodreads on March 12, 2018.

Some Fruits of Solitude

By William Penn – 1682

Review by Robin Marx

Part of the Harvard Classics reading list, like the Journal of John Woolman this is the work of a colonial era Quaker. Apart from founding Pennsylvania, William Penn was a principled and devout theologian and worked to spread religious tolerance in his community. (He was also the original face of the Quaker Oats brand, until they rebranded to a more generic figure later.)

The book itself is a collection of homilies and observations, generally having to do with personal improvement and faith. A lot of them are well trodden ground, but others remain good advice today. That being said, I found it a bit ironic that someone who extols the virtue of humility would write a book that aims to provide moral instruction. To me, that seems to be the epitome of “holier than thou.”

The passages about “servants” also didn't sit very well, as Penn was a slave owner. Those sections made me reflect fondly on fellow Harvard Classics member John Woolman's abolitionist fervor, but perhaps it's unfair to judge Penn by the merits of a Quaker who wasn't born until two years after Penn's death.

Overall this book was an interesting look at the values of Penn's time, but modern readers will find a lot of the advice either obvious, outdated, or too tied to specific aspects of religion.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on February 11, 2019.

The Phantom City (Doc Savage #10)

By Kenneth Robeson (House Name)/Lester Dent – Street & Smith – 1933

Review by Robin Marx

After what seems like too many America-bound stories (The Red Skull, The Czar of Fear, Quest of the Spider), this entry is a return to globe-trotting adventure. After being attacked by a group with high-tech weapons (basically rail guns, which was surprising to see in a story this old) Savage is approached by an Arab seeking to hire the Helldiver submarine (last seen in The Polar Treasure) for mysterious reasons.

Put simply, this is the sort of story I read Doc Savage for. It has a brisk pace, world travel, a lost civilization, subhuman savages, advanced technology, and an exotic beauty. It was nice to see the return of the Helldiver submarine, as it seems like gear, treasure, and vehicles acquired in pulp stories and comics all too often evaporates between episodes.

I was starting to lose interest in the series after bland installments like The Red Skull and The Czar of Fear, but this story was a return to form. It looks like the following volume is another story set in America, but hopefully it maintains this level of energy.

★★★★☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on October 15, 2020.

A Head Full of Ghosts

By Paul Tremblay – William Morrow – June 2, 2015

Review by Robin Marx

When psychiatric treatment fails to cure a 14-year-old girl’s bizarre outbursts, her desperate father turns to religion. And with the family’s finances in dire straits, he allows a film crew into their home to film a reality TV show about the apparent demonic possession and ensuing exorcism.

This book is told through the eyes of Merry, the 8-year-old sister of the troubled teenager. Tremblay’s handling of such a young viewpoint character is truly masterful. As the father of an 8-year-old girl, Merry felt authentically kid-like, not like the weirdly precocious miniature adults so often seen in entertainment. She’s stuck in a terrifying situation that she’s even less equipped to handle than her struggling parents, betrayed by and frightened of the older sister she used to idolize.

Unfortunately, despite a great viewpoint character, the story isn’t quite as fulfilling as it could have been. The possession and climactic exorcism are handled in a pretty traditional manner that’s been seen in fiction a dozen times. The reality show trappings and passages of the book featuring a horror blogger providing wry retrospective commentary upon the TV episodes add some originality to the proceedings, but in the end it felt more could have been done with those elements.

I enjoyed this book and raced through it pretty quickly, but despite moments of excellence it felt like there was some wasted potential.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on May 14, 2012.

The Final Solution

By Michael Chabon – Fourth Estate – November 9, 2004

Review by Robin Marx

The Final Solution has a compelling premise, but the execution (perhaps a poor choice of words when dealing with a book that obliquely refers to the Holocaust) leaves a bit to be desired.

Although he's referred to solely as “the old man,” it's immediately apparent that the protagonist is intended to be Sherlock Holmes at 89. The idea of Holmes coming out of retirement during World War II to solve one more mystery is intriguing, but the reason why he becomes involved in this particular case (a murder and a bird-napping) seems a bit flimsy. While I'd hoped to see the master detective—even a Holmes diminished by age—there wasn't much in the way of brilliant deductions, just a few “Easter egg” references to past cases and an admittedly clever allusion to the title of what was intended to be Holmes' final case, “The Final Problem.”

The characters were too many in number, and too sketchily rendered to leave much an impression. This surprised me, since characterization was such a strong point in his previous novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

Another issue I had is that the viewpoint character for the climactic scene is a parrot. This isn't an unforgivable sin—it was an interesting portrayal—but it IS pretty goofy.

Finally, detective novels (even self-consciously literary ones) live and die on their mystery, but here Holmes solves the lesser one while ignoring the larger one. He nabs the murderer while failing to uncover the nature of the German numbers constantly recited by the parrot at the heart of the case. The reader will likely figure it out right away, but Holmes never does. I imagine this was intentional on the part of Chabon; he seems to want to say that even a master detective is incapable of realizing the scope and true horror of the Nazis' depravity. However, it didn't feel right or authentic that Sherlock Holmes would let this particular puzzle slide.

While I don't feel like my time was wasted reading this book, I do feel like the interesting premise was wasted on an undercooked story.

★★☆☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on May 15, 2012.

Heart of Darkness

By Joseph Conrad – Blackwood's Magazine – 1899

Review by Robin Marx

While Apocalypse Now gave me a vague idea of what to expect in the original novella, Heart of Darkness still ended up pleasantly surprising me.

This book can be best summed up with two key words: tension and intensity. Heart of Darkness reads almost like a Gothic horror novel, with a creepy sense of uneasiness and isolation that grows over time.

After narrator Marlowe arrives in Africa, the reader is treated to a continuous series of vignettes showing the brutal reality of slavery and the methods used to keep the ivory trade going. African characters are presented as bestial savages, but the white characters Marlowe encounters are also contemptible without exception. They're brutal thugs, incompetent stuffed shirts, or conniving cheats. They stand in stark contrast to Kurtz, an almost mythical figure spoken of with awe, fear, and jealousy. With mechanical failures and hostile natives, Marlowe's steamboat trip grows more and more hellish and desperate over time, while Kurtz himself becomes even more mysterious and sinister.

Just as this narrative tension reaches its height, we finally come face to face with Kurtz himself. Despite being weakened by illness and insanity, Kurtz is nothing if not intense. Marlowe finds himself horrified by the jungle theocracy Kurtz has set up for himself, but even he can't help being cowed by his charisma and force of will. Marlowe finds himself marked by his brief contact with the man, and left with a decidedly grim view of humanity as a whole.

Literary Classics™ are frequently imposing, monumental works, but Heart of Darkness turned out to be an unexpectedly swift read. So much has been made of the book's exploration of the “duality of mankind” that I'd expected a dry, verbose story, but this wasn't the case at all. Instead, the book was engaging throughout, and its exploration of man's inhumanity to man avoided becoming didactic and impenetrable. I found the book to be much more vibrant than the dense, fossilized analysis and criticism that has accreted around it.

★★★★☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on June 7, 2011.

The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'

By William Hope Hodgson – Chapman and Hall – 1907

Review by Robin Marx

This is a rather gripping survival horror story that follows the crew of a pair of lifeboats, sailors adrift after the sinking of the titular 'Glen Carrig.' Hodgson wastes no time getting into the action; the shipwreck itself is covered in basically a single perfunctory paragraph, and events start getting strange and deadly very quickly.

The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig' is similar to his other novels, The House on the Borderland and The Night Land, in that they're basically a linear narrative following the protagonist through a number of bizarre episodes. They read more like travelogues than carefully plotted novels, but the events are interesting enough that this isn't much of a complaint.

The story is written in an intentionally archaic style, with no quoted dialogue and few named characters, but it's fast-paced and packed with engrossing imagery. Stylistically it's a much more approachable read than The Night Land, which—while challenging—I also enjoyed considerably.

Hodgson delivers a thoroughly entertaining and imaginative story. I've enjoyed everything I've read by him thus far, and it's become clear that he's one of the more underrated figures in early 20th century horror fiction. I recommend The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig' wholeheartedly.

★★★★☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on May 28, 2012.

The Master Mind of Mars

By Edgar Rice Burroughs – A. C. McClurg – 1928

Review by Robin Marx

Despite being the 6th novel in the series, in this story Burroughs proves that there are plenty of stories left to tell on Barsoom, and that John Carter or Carthoris don't need to be present to have a compelling story.

Our protagonist is a World War I soldier with the incredibly badass name Ulysses Paxton. When he gets blown in half by an artillery shell, he finds himself on Barsoom, a planet he knows well from Edgar Rice Burrough's stories. I like that—as with John Carter's original teleportation to Mars—Burroughs doesn't go into detail about how the journey takes places. Paxton himself has no time to care, he immediately gets attacked by an angry local. I also like that there aren't any An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge hints that Paxton's adventures are dying hallucinations. Paxton's adventures are genuine.

Like many of the Barsoom stories to date, the plot involves a dashing man's quest to rescue a damsel in distress. While this is familiar territory, Burroughs gives it a twist in this story by having the body of Paxton's love interest be spirited away, while (due to a brain transplant at the hands of a fun mad scientist character) her mind remains prisoner in the used-up body of a rich harridan.

Through charisma and respect-earning manliness Paxton quickly assembles a team of trusted comrades, including a master assassin and an experimental gorilla/human hybrid. The pace of the book is brisk and there's plenty of swashbuckling action to be had. Burroughs is clearly sticking to an established recipe, but the meal is satisfying.

★★★★☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on May 30, 2018.

The Sargasso Ogre (Doc Savage #8)

By Kenneth Robeson (House Name)/Lester Dent – Street & Smith – 1933

Review by Robin Marx

Returning from their last adventure, upon leaving Egypt Doc Savage and his companions have their ocean liner hijacked by modern day pirates and taken to the Sargasso Sea. Doc Savage finds himself working to protect both the passengers of his ocean liner and a shipful of beautiful castaways while dealing with well-entrenched enemies led by the titular “Sargasso Ogre.”

This was one of the better entries in the Doc Savage series so far. It felt a bit more grounded than some previous installments (i.e., no giant poisonous bats this time), but it included exotic locations, an interesting antagonist, and plenty of action.

Doc's companions didn't seem especially effective this time, so Doc is left to do most of the heavy lifting. The women presented in the story were surprisingly well-rendered for the time. Their leader instantly falls for “woman-proof” Savage, of course, but she and her crew prove to be brave and resourceful.

Bruze, the “Sargasso Ogre,” is one of the more interesting opponents portrayed in the series so far. He's physically intimidating, but in his one hand-to-hand combat with Doc he immediately realizes he is outmatched, and spends rest of the book actively avoiding another fight, instead relying on animal cunning to put Savage in danger. The moment in which he receives his comeuppance is rather abrupt, but it makes for an exciting scene of poetic justice.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on September 21, 2014.

At Drake's Command

By David Wesley Hill – Temurlone Press – November 16, 2013

Review by Robin Marx

This nautical adventure is the first chronicle of Peregrine James's adventures as a part of Sir Francis Drake's crew. The book reads like one of the early Horatio Hornblower novels, with an earnest and resourceful young man proving his worth to his superiors, but rather than a promising young midshipman, James acts as the ship's cook. This provides an interesting perspective on the events to follow.

This book is well-grounded in history, taking place on a historical expedition full of real, named historical characters. This feeling of authenticity extends to every corner of the book. The details of seagoing life and the dialogue all feel realistic and colorful. I particularly appreciated how the author didn't shy away from the bawdier aspects of the sailor's language and lifestyle like many nautical fiction authors; this earthiness added a level of realism that is often lacking in more “PG-rated” ocean adventures.

My only complaint about this book is that I wish there was more of it. I wasn't aware going into the book that it was to be part of a series, I expected a stand-alone novel and because of my misperception the pacing felt a bit off throughout the book. Nearly a quarter of the book is done before the ship actually ventures out to sea, and rather than circumnavigating the globe, the events described here hover around Africa's Barbary Coast, a fact that made me a bit nervous as the end of the book approached. Not only does the book only cover a portion of the journey, it also ends on a right bastard of a cliffhanger. While I was pleased to see that more adventures are to follow, and pacing is less of a concern if the reader is aware going in that more books are forthcoming, I still can't shake the feeling that—instead of a complete book with a beginning, middle, and end—this book is simply a bloodily truncated section of a larger work. That's one aspect that compares unfavorably with something like the Hornblower series, which managed to deliver satisfyingly self-contained stories within the framework of a larger saga.

That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I'm very eager to see what comes next.

★★★★☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on May 29, 2012.

Winterfair Gifts

By Lois McMaster Bujold – Spectrum Literary Agency – January 5, 2011

Review by Robin Marx

Winterfair Gifts first debuted in a genre romance anthology called Irresistible Forces, but I'd only recommend it to those already familiar with the Vorkosigan stories, as it doesn't stand on its own very well. While not an indispensable entry in Bujold's long-running Vorkosigan series, this novella was a very satisfying read, one of those rare stories that left me with warm fuzzies after the story's conclusion.

Taking place between A Civil Affair and Diplomatic Immunity, plot is secondary in this story. This is a trait shared with some of the other recent Vorkosigan books, but this isn't a gripe. People read Bujold for her characters, which are second to none. With more than two dozen Vorkosigan stories available, Miles Vorkosigan, his family, and comrades have all become like friends to this reader. Every new Vorkosigan story is a welcome chance to visit with these longtime friends again.

★★★★☆

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