Jack Lovejoy

The fun continues. Salustan has fallen. Derek and his woman Eva (who, we're repeatedly assured is the most beautiful woman on earth and who wears only tiny bits of fur, like an even more skimpily dressed Raquel Welch from One Million Years B.C.) lead the refugees through the cataclysmic wastelands, seeking a new place to call home while dealing with the looming threat of the Brotherhood of Diablo.

The Second Kingdom doesn't have the focused location and basic setup of the first book. It's the middle book in a trilogy, with all that entails. Our heroes go through several adventures while setting up the epic conclusion. It's an enjoyable schlocky read. I will immediately be moving to the third and final book.… (meer)

Some time after an unexplained Cataclysm, the sad remnants of humanity huddle in the mountain bunker of Saluston. Only the mighty Derek the Hunter braves the outside world and the mutated beast things that live there. But Saluston face a threat from the inside. The subhuman, cannibalistic Gunks that live below the bunker have been organized by a mysterious organization and are attacking the Saluston survivors. Can the mighty Derek save humanity?

So as I read a book, my mind plays out a sort of movie in my mind. For this book, the movie was a low-budget, possibly Italian movie. Complete with bad costumes and cheap sets and the Beastmaster himself, Marc Singer as Derek.

Creation Descending is a bad book. Derek is a near-Mary Sue and the other characters are cartoonish. The Gunks knives are invariably described as 'filth-encrusted'. Another character has a 'little round head' we are told over and over and over. It's hack-work.

But like those cheap exploitation movies I compared the book to, it is also lots of fun. Not in spite of the short-comings, but quite probably because of the short-comings. I first read this book when I was twelve or so and even then, I understood it was schlock. But even so, I reread it a couple times over the years. When I stumbled across the sequels years later, I was overjoyed.

If you understand what you are getting into, it's a fun read.… (meer)