Delightful—a potential blockbuster lacking only a hearty plot to match the highly impressive personalities and setting.
Another of Resnick’s Weird West fantasy yarns (The Buntline Special, 2010, etc.) starring consumptive dentist/sharpshooter Doc Holliday and an eye-popping selection of other historical characters.
In 1885, the peace treaty signed by Theodore Roosevelt and Apache medicine man (read: wizard) Geronimo has opened up the West to white men. Two of the latter, unfortunately, are now desecrating Comanche burial grounds by digging up bones. The bones in question, however, are dinosaur bones, and the diggers are brilliant paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, bitter rivals united only in their mutual loathing. The outraged Comanche medicine men are threatening to reanimate the dinosaurs to get rid of Marsh and Cope, but Geronimo fears that the dinosaurs won’t be satisfied with eating or squashing paleontologists but will imperil Comanches and Apaches, too. So, Geronimo visits Doc Holliday, presently gasping and coughing out his last days in a sanitarium, and offers Doc one year of restored health in exchange for removing the white men. That’s pretty much it as far as plot goes, but Resnick paints in the scenery with extraordinarily vivid brush strokes, adds a palette of bigger-than-life-sized characters—including Roosevelt, Edison, Buntline, Cole Younger and Buffalo Bill Cody—and tops it all off with dazzling conversations, rhetorical flourishes, and Holliday's trademark dry wit, fast reflexes and legendary capacity to drink all day without getting drunk. Oh, and there are no less than nine appendices to explore.
Delightful—a potential blockbuster lacking only a hearty plot to match the highly impressive personalities and setting.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61614-861-4
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Pyr/Prometheus Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This is an addition to Dickson's fantasy series (The Dragon Knight, 1990, etc.) featuring a former college professor, Jim Eckert, and his wife, Angie, who have been transported to an alternate 14th-century England where magic works. Jim is apprentice to the powerful wizard Carolinus and he is also the Dragon Knight—since he can transform himself into a dragon. This time, Jim and Angie are requested to spend the 12 days of Christmas at the Earl of Somerset's castle. Unfortunately, problems—for which Carolinus expects Jim to provide solutions—rapidly pile up. Angie announces her intention to adopt an orphan baby, thus frustrating Jim's desire to return to the 20th century. The troll that has lived under the castle for 1,800 years complains that a rival troll has infiltrated the castle's human guests, while a troll army has mysteriously assembled beyond the castle walls. The local dragons demand to attend the Christmas celebrations. And Jim's magical competence is disputed by a wizard one grade higher than he. Agreeably 14th-century in ambience, whimsical in tone yet devoid of real humor, this overlong installment should please series fans, but won't tempt many newcomers.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-441-00098-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In Conner's alternate 1930, a lethal hemorrhagic fever (known as Hun for its supposed origins in the German trenches of 1918) has repeatedly swept the world, leaving few white survivors; oddly, black Africans are wholly immune. In Milltown, Minn., white press photographer Danny Constantine accidentally captures on film a murder in which the victim appears to have been drained of blood; the killer seems to be a blond woman—but someone else stood by, watching. Black detective sergeant Dooley Willson proves none too impressed with Constantine's vampire theories. Meanwhile, a mystery woman calling herself the Archangel broadcasts inspirational messages and music from a pirate radio station. And, at a wealthy nearby clinic, brilliant, mesmerizing, but creepy physician Simon Gray has found that massive blood transfusions from black donors can keep white Hun victims alive. But Gray also conducts horrid experiments in secret: Indeed, Constantine suspects that Gray has created vampires, able to pump their victims' blood directly into their own veins. Certainly Gray has made dark deals with both the KKK and local black gangster Theo Rostek. But Constantine can't figure out the hold Gray has over his attractive, rich patient Selena Crockett. Could she be the vampire killer? And who is the Archangel? More horror than science fiction. Chills aside, the basic premise will make many readers uncomfortable. Still, despite some problems with plot credibility, an intriguing and inventive hardcover debut.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-85743-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1994
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