Arthur Byron CoverBesprekingen

Nº 14 de 24 de la serie "blanca" de libros juegos. A excepción de otras series en esta solo había un final y un solución correcta, y se te ofrecían pistas sobre la época en la cual realizabas tu misión. En este numero retrocedes hasta la revolucion francesa en el momento que una turba intenta llevarte a la guillotina.

Contains:
The platypus of doom --
The armadillo of destruction --
The aardvark of despair --
The clam of catastrophe.

This is definitely a strange adaption of Macbeth. I never thought of Macbeth being set in the distant future in space. The Shakespearean English set in a science fiction was strange and I couldn't get used to it. My biggest problem with this adaption though is that most of the characters were drawn so similarly that I had a hard time telling them apart, I couldn't tell the difference between Macbeth, Macduff and Banquo. I gave this three stars because of my bias towards the original play, Macbeth is my favorite Shakespearean play so that made me bump up my rating some.

This is definitely a strange adaption of Macbeth. I never thought of Macbeth being set in the distant future in space. The Shakespearean English set in a science fiction was strange and I couldn't get used to it. My biggest problem with this adaption though is that most of the characters were drawn so similarly that I had a hard time telling them apart, I couldn't tell the difference between Macbeth, Macduff and Banquo. I gave this three stars because of my bias towards the original play, Macbeth is my favorite Shakespearean play so that made me bump up my rating some.

This was much better than I'd thought it would be. I don't remember the movie but I'm sure I must have seen it way back when. It's a great adventure in the heady realms of pulp sci fi, with all the ingredients that you would expect being present, and a few more that you might not. Turns out Dale is a bit of a swinger, or was until she split with her boyfreind because he was taking it a little too seriously, a little further than she was entirely comfortable with. Well, who'd have thought it. Dale, a swinger. Each to their own I suppose. It just came as bit of a surprise when I first read it is all.

So, you all know the story. Flash and Dale are taken at gunpoint to the planet Mongo by Dr Hans Zarkov where an evil dictator and all-round madman called Ming rules with an iron fist. They join forces with the locals and overthrow him. Oh, and Ming's daughter betrays him and helps them too, but I'm not spoiling it for anyone here of course because the story's so well known.

I loved the little extra details that really made this novel that bit more special. The description of Zarkov's rocket ship with it's fancy fins and little flashing bulbs on the control console for example were just a delight.

The moments of sarcasm from Dale, and the hints here and there regarding Ming and his daughter, Aura. These moments really added something special to this novel and make me want to track down the movie now so that I can re-live those moments on screen, although I doubt Dale's more intimate revelations are part of the movie version.

Anyway, a very enjoyable read. Some unexpected moments, and the tongue-in-cheek pulpiness is just priceless. Highly recomended.

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I really enjoyed the first story, Coyote Moon, but I felt the other two were lacking. They didn’t really feel like Buffy stories.

Eigenlijk weinig van te zeggen.

A collection of three stories et in the early timeline centred on Buffy and the Scoobies as they once more battle the forces of evil in their own inimitable way. The first of these was Coyote Moon which sees a carnival arrive in town staffed with suspiciously attractive young men and women with the exception of one grizzled old veteran. Coincidentally at around the same time a pack of coyote’s are hunting and killing pets in the surrounding local area. With both Willow and Xander being caught up with the carnies, Buffy decides some investigation is in order. A poor story with bad characterisation and if I never see the word werecrocodiles again it’ll still be too soon.

Night of the Living Rerun takes us back to the time of the Salem witch trials with Buffy, Giles and Xander all experiencing vivid dreams from various participants points of view. When three famous people with connections to the spirit world happen to converge on Sunnydale then there must be something amiss. Can Buffy and the gang find out what it is in time to prevent the Master from rising once again? Another story I was fairly indifferent to especially when the zombies appeared to turn it into a kind of Night of the Living Dead pastiche.

It’s a good job that the first two stories were short enough to plough through with enough energy to move on to the third which proved to be the most enjoyable of the three. Portal Through Time sees another attempt to prevent the Master’s demise at the hands of Buffy when Lucien, a vampire magician, finds a way to travel back in time. When initial plans to kill Buffy before she becomes the Slayer fail (twice) he is advised to prevent Buffy from ever becoming a Slayer by killing previous Slayers to alter the timeline so that she was never activated. Buffy and the gang have to follow Lucien through time and prevent his nefarious plans. First stop is off to see the Welsh Druids in 60 C.E. and then on to ancient Sumeria and get to meet Gilgamesh before a dangerous encounter during the American Civil War and finally to Paris during the French Revolution where Darla and Angelus happen to be while cutting a bloody swathe through Europe of their own. This entry probably recreates the characters, hi-jinks and pop culture references of the source material better than the other two so makes the book readable as a whole but doesn’t qualify it for greatness.

Well, that was strange--so bonus points for being unusual. It was a very spare story with minimal characterization, thus hard to care about anyone--rather more like early 17th century romances, if you're familiar with those, than like modern novels. The story perked up a bit near the end when the three friends travel in search of bems--we get descriptions of other worlds which are interesting, reminding me of Hughes' Fools Errant which I very much more enjoyed. But ultimately it wasn't the kind of oddity that appealed to me.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).

First half was cool, second half, not so much.

One of the pleasures of reading these Time Machine books when I was a kid was how it sparked my interest in whatever time period I was visiting. Spoiler Alert: Marie Antoinette, the widely unpopular Queen during the French Revolution (1789-1799), was beheaded by the guillotine in 1793. This morbid fact piqued my curiosity enough that it eventually, years later, led me to learn more about European history in the late 18th century.½

Is there any more an entertaining movie than 1980s "Flash Gordon"? From the cheesy colorful sets, corny dialogue, laughable special effects and fantastically beautiful women - the whole production is over-the-top. No surprise then that the novelization to accompany the movie is also great fun. I picked this up at my local newsagent when I was about 8-years old and then braved a frozen town hall (that once a month was converted into a movie theater) to see the movie on the big screen. The novelization is so much fun that when I moved to the United States I had to seek out another copy and now own one copy in the United Kingdom and one copy here in the U.S.

This series is dragging on. The problem is that I was hooked from the first book into wanting to find out how the main character developed amnesia and what his story is. So, I read on and on. It's ok and the books are short and clever, but maybe they would have been more interesting when I was a youngster. I'll read the next book. I have to know the ending.

This is an interesting series and an interesting book. The book and the series isn't and aren't particularly well plotted or well written. The characters are pretty one dimensional. There's a lot that's left unsaid and untold. But it's an original story and as a result it's interesting reading.

In this, Book Four, of the Robot City series, the robots develop personalities and discover the arts. One robot builds a colorful, artistic building that overwhelms the robots, as well as Derec and Ariel. Unfortunately, one robot isn't very thrilled about it and "murders" the artistic robot. Derec suspects him, and strangely, sets out to prove his guilt by staging the play, Hamlet, with he and Ariel starring, surrounded by robot actors. It's truly bizarre.

Ariel's disease is starting to get to her in this book and she's slowing going mad. She needs to get off planet badly for medical help. Derec, of course, wants to get off planet to help him recover from his amnesia.

They also meet three robots who play music and crack jokes. The music is Duke Ellington and they're initially not that good, but they improve over time. Derec is astounded that robots can evolve into beings with human-type characteristics.

Additionally, the creator of Robot City finally shows up. Dr. Avery is a total asshole and takes them prisoner, with their robot and their alien friend, Wolruf. He uses a truth serum on them, but they don't know what for. He's come in a space ship however and Derec uses robot logic on their robot guard to get him to release Ariel from captivity. She in turn, releases the others. The book ends with their finding the ship and taking off, destination unknown. Oddly, Derec finds that he immediately misses Robot City and wants to return. That makes no sense to me, as he's spent four straight books now trying to escape.

I guess something will happen to their space ship and they'll be forced to return as there are two more books in the series. I don't know what, though, and that'll keep me me reading the next one. The book is fairly creative, and I appreciate that, but like the others, it leaves so much out of the plot and the dialogue is so stilted that it's only a three star book at the most. It definitely could have been improved upon. Recommended, only if you're reading the series.

Other than actually time traveling, the Time Machine books are awash with frequent moments of landing in danger and subsequently running from it. As I revisit this series I'm noticing this trend more and more, and that it's overused when story and historical intrigue are lacking. The persistent takeaway from American Revolutionary is that Paul Revere is cool, Benedict Arnold is a scoundrel, and by all means don't get shot by the red coats.

I've finished reading all the books. This last one did not captivate me the way the other three did. The Salem Witch trials for this genre are cliche. While the plot was more complex than the previous 3 books, I think Giles and Xander, especially were written too out of character to maintain my suspension of disbelief. I kept stopping to think to myself: that's not how so and so would act!

The Rings of Saturn is the only Time Machine entry to go forward in time rather than back. An interesting experiment. I can't figure out if they always intended it as a one-off or realized that all travel-to-the-future adventures would resemble each other and therefore kept to the past for the subsequent volumes.

Well done to the author for creating a future reality that's believable both politically and socially, and still accessible for the kids.½

While this novel is written quite like Asimov it was written by two authors under Asimov’s guidance, with a forward and a mid-novel commentary by Asimov.
This is quite a story. It begins with a young man, Derec, waking in a survival pod on a frozen asteroid, not knowing who he is or where he is. His personal history is a blank slate, yet he retains his technical knowledge. It ends with Derec saving Robot City from an out-of-control defense system. What happens in between, of course, is the real story.
Robot City is one of the best novels I’ve ever read. Not that I couldn’t set it aside when other demands required my attention or fatigue blurred my vision, but I didn’t want to. The situations were fraught with danger, Derec and Katherine (the protagonists) all too real and the story line compelling and all to believable.
Along the way Michael and Michael explain the laws of robotics and create human/robot interactions that display the complexity of such relationships and the misunderstandings and miscommunications that entails. The truth is robots are logical and humans are a collection of competing emotions and misguided logic.
I was impressed with the technology displayed throughout and have no doubt whatsoever that the robot/human collaboration will someday make it all real.
Despite the high caliber of the writing, there were a number of issues that I was less than comfortable with. Such as the twenty plus typos any proof reader should’ve easily spotted and corrected and the consistent, misplaced and inexplicable underlying anger that was so much a part of both protagonists. Another was the significant number of loose threads that never got tidied up. Michael 2 wrapped it up by writing that Derec still didn’t know who he was and where he came from by the end, and there were certain things that would be beyond the protagonists’ pov. But then there was the issue of the body and the unknown behind-the-scenes hand, both of which were glazed over, perhaps as not relevant to the story. Still, this lack of closure bothered me.
Would I recommend this to sci-fi and Asimov fans? Absolutely.½

This graphic novel retells the story of Macbeth. Macbeth gets a prophecy claiming he will be king. He acts on it violently. Eventually, his violence brings justice down upon him.

This novel contains some of the same dialogue that the original does. This keeps it relevant to the original by allowing you to talk about how the language was different. There are also some occurrences that will have to be explained. For instance, why Macbeth feels entitled to the throne although he isn't kin to the king.

ON the whole, I didn't like this graphic novel. I found it to be rather bland as far as art work goes. One of the neat things about graphic novels is that there is cool art work in it. If not for the art, why not read a picture-less version? I've also read Macbeth before, so the plot wasn't new to me.

A trio of stories based on the series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", and probably set sometime after the first season. I'm not sure if this is fan fiction, but the first two stories certainly read like it. The third is the pick of the litter, a more ambitious time-travel story that, shades of "Terminator", has Buffy and crew going back to various pivotal points in time to prevent a team of vamps from preventing her own eventual existence as a Slayer. This one is also more mature in level of writing and emotional exploration of the characters, no mean feat given the limitations of the novelization framework the author (Alice Henderson) had to work with. All in all, a guilty pleasure partly redeemed by the last story, "Portal Through Time" (I would have picked something cheesier like "The Buffinator", but that's just me).½

Coyote Moon by John Vornholt: Absolutely ridiculous. The story was ludicrous (werecoyotes?? ...and Giles confirms the past existence of werealligators??) and Vornholt had clearly only ever watched one episode of BtVS, ever... and that episode was probably 'Go Fish'. The characters most out of whack were Giles and Xander, but Buffy and Willow were not that far behind. This story read like the author had what he thought was a good idea for a YA book, and somehow got the green light on using the Buffy characters and just stuck them in.

Night Of the Living Rerun by Arthur Byron Cover: Slightly less ridiculous, but not by much. It actually starts out rather promising, with Buffy having a very in-depth dream about the Slayer in Salem in 1692 at the height of the witch trials. It's when Giles also starts having the dreams and Xander dreams that he's a witch named Sarah that the entire thing falls apart. Cover's love of and nod to Night Of the Living Dead is completely misplaced and completely derails the entire plot of the story.

Portal Through Time by Alice Henderson: This fine woman can write a BtVS novel. The longest of the three in the collection, it takes up roughly half of the books pages and nearly makes up for the clusterfuck that is the other two stories. The story takes place mid-season two (before Angel turns) and begins with two vampires that have discovered a way to time travel. They keep going back in time to kill Buffy before she is called in an attempt to change the course of events so that the Master rises, instead of being killed by Buffy. When their attempts fail, they decide to go back farther (like ancient Sumeria farther) to kill past slayers to disrupt the slayer lineage in hopes that Buffy will never be called and therefore THEN the Master will prevail. Buffy and the gang are hot on the vamps heels as they whirl their way through not only Sumeria, but also Wales in 60 CE, Tennessee during the Civil War, and finally Paris on the Night Of Terror during the Revolution (where they meet a few unexpected foes). Henderson knows her BtVS AND she knows her history and she blends them splendidly. I couldn't put the book down during this one.½

The story of the next few years after some of the craziness of the first story, The characters are trying their best to survive the fallout of previous events and deal with the craziness of Critical Mass who has taken Chicago hostage. They all have to work together but try to keep all the others alive so the power doesn't corrupt more of them. They also want to know why and what's going on with their powers.

It was obviously a bridging novel, interesting but somehow lacking. I do want to read the next book in the series to see what happens.½

Over twenty years ago a comet struck outside the town of Pederson, Illinois. The children who were in utero when the comet struck, all 113 of them, gained super-powers when they were born.

When one dies the others gain in power, some of the superheroes are trying to live normal lives, but someone is hunting them for their powers and things will never be normal again.

Interesting but I need to read the rest of the series to decide what I really think.½

This is the fourth book in the Robot City series, which is based in Asimov's Foundation universe. This one follows Odyssey, Suspicion and Cyborg.

This book has quite a different style, the robot characters using quite convoluted sentences, which I found annoying. It is a little jarring in this series that each book is by a different author -- it takes me a little while to transition between the authors' various styles when I read them, especially when they're back to back. I think what Cover was trying to achieve is a more intellectual style of book than the others in the series, and it suffers the same fate as the Benford's Foundation's Fear -- the style is out of place with the rest of the books in the series, and that decreases from the enjoyment to be derived from this book.

The actual plot line is fine though, if a little simplistic. Because of the very verbose style, it feels like less happened in this book than the others (which are of similar length). Overall, a bit of a disappointment.

http://www.stillhq.com/book/Arthur_Byron_Cover/Isaac_Asimovs_Robot_City_Prodigy....