review of
John Blaine's The Lost City
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 27, 2012

While written under a pseudonym, these Rick Brant stories were all written by the same author (or coauthors), unlike the similar Hardy Boys & Tom Swift series. As I explained in my review of the Hardy Boys' The Clue in the Embers ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13583071-the-clue-in-the-embers ), I recently got interested in rereading bks that I read as a child thanks to an interview question posed to me by my friend & fellow writer Alan Davies. As I wrote in that review: "I find it moderately fascinating to reread something that I wd've last read 50 yrs ago to reappraise the culture that they represented at the time."

While I definitely read the Hardy Boys & Tom Swift bks, I'm not sure about this "Rick Brant Electronic Adventure". But given that it was published by the same publisher as the former 2 series & that the size & look of them is similar, it seems very familiar nonetheless.

I started reading this one b/c I'd hurt my leg & wanted to read something completely undemanding to while away my recovery time. I didn't bother to take notes for this review b/c it didn't seem worth the effort.

As w/ the Hardy Boys, the main protagonist is a young 'white' male whose father has an exciting profession that's both led to extraordinary knowledge at an early age & to adventures few are ever likely to encounter. Like The Clue in the Embers, this adventure takes the characters to another continent where 'exotic' people live. Also like The Clue in the Embers, mysterious people try to sabotage their mission. In other words, this is formulaic writing meant to encourage 'white' boys to be resourceful in 'conquering' the world - wch is, of course, their oyster.

This isn't really as 'bad' as my use of the word 'conquering' implies. The use of far-flung locales (in relation to the New Jersey origins of the young men) is a way of introducing parts of the world to the readers to get their imaginations 'out of the box' & into a wider world. In this story, the main villain is an impeccably dressed 'white' man from the Netherlands wearing a clean white suit - & 'our heros' fall for him as someone to be trusted b/c of this appearance. On the other hand, the most helpful character is an impoverished young Indian lad who's dirty & ragged & who speaks pigeon-English & who the protagonists make the mistake of not taking seriously. SO, there's a bit of parody of American stereotyping.

Nonetheless, there's a bit of 'yellow peril' here w/ such torrid passages as "Rick looked into the greasy, Oriental faces with their black, animal-like eyes and knew he could expect no mercy." This latter in reference to the descendants of Ghenghis Khan - by all accounts an extremely nasty fellow.

All in all, I enjoyed it & wd recommend it to practically no-one. Why? As w/ the Hardy Boys, this story was written for a particular time & place & wd have to be revised to reserve the same function as it originally did. As literature in & of itself, it's not that great. For one thing, the villains are so transparent to the reader that they're immediately recognizable while the heros blunder on stupidly. That, of course, can be a technique for making the reader feel smarter & making the reader get emotional about the ongoing foolishness of the protagonists but I just found it annoying.

I wonder if there are any equivalent series today? & how naive & Polly Purebred wd the characters be if there were one? I think of Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/277017.Against_the_Day ). Wd Grosset & Dunlop (the original publisher of many of these series) be as daring as Pynchon & have their heros be young anarchist train-hoppers fighting greedy corporate villains? ( )