Shadow of the Assassins

A few weeks ago, when I discussed the graphic novel Warlord of Mars: The Fall of Barsoom, I mentioned that I didn’t know of many novels that told new stories in the worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs. What I hadn’t realized when I said that is that Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc – the company Burroughs himself founded to manage his literary estate – has recently started publishing new novels by noted authors set in the worlds Burroughs created. This includes novels about Tarzan, Barsoom, Pelucidar, and more. As I perused their offerings, I discovered that one of their Barsoom novels, A Princess of Mars: Shadow of the Assassins had received a very good review from Anthony R. Cardno, whose work appears in Hadrosaur Productions’ anthology Kepler’s Cowboys. I took that as a solid recommendation and decided to try the book.

A Princess of Mars: Shadow of the Assassins, written by Ann Tonsor Zeddies, is a prequel to Burroughs’ Barsoom series. In the novel, we meet Dejah Thoris on the cusp of adulthood. She’s the daughter of Mors Kajak, Jed (or prince) of Lesser Helium and granddaughter of Tardos Mors, Helium’s Jeddak (or king). As the story opens, Dejah Thoris’s brother has just left on a scientific expedition. She’s just at the age to bristle at not being included, so she sets out on her own to follow him just as far her father’s orders will allow. Unfortunately, she comes across a tribe of Barsoom’s twelve-foot-tall four-armed green warriors making an incursion into Helium’s territory. They shoot at her flier, so she has to retreat. Of course, Mors Kajak is not going to let this incursion stand, so he prepares to go out and do battle with the green warriors. However, an ambassador from the city-state of Zor appears and indicates he wants to build better relations with Helium. He invites Mors Kajak to a series of games to be held in Zor. Mors Kajak must beg off, but Dejah Thoris persuades her father to let her go in his place.

When Dejah Thoris arrives in Zor, accompanied by one of her mother’s close advisors and a guard detachment, she finds the people are not as refined as they are in her own country of Helium. The Jed of Zor, Jan Vajo, is a little too forward and ill-mannered as he courts Dejah Thoris. What’s more, plots seem to be afoot. Assassins are stalking the streets and the Jed must maintain food tasters and guards at all time to assure that his own people don’t attack him. When the games happen, it becomes apparent that the Jed and his sister have favorites and expect Dejah Thoris in her role as arbiter of the games to pick them as winners. While those favorites win based on technicalities, the princess decides to give accolades to others who show skill and bravery as well. After the games, the princess and one of the athletes she favored are kidnapped and taken out to the desert where it looks like they may be held as hostages. Of course, this being Dejah Thoris, she won’t sit still and wait for whatever ransom demands might be forthcoming.

All in all, I rather enjoyed this 2024 novel about Barsoom. All of the familiar characters feel authentically like Burroughs’ creations. While Dejah Thoris bristles at the boundaries her parents set for her, I liked the way she came to see the wisdom of their boundaries and how she learned to respect what they told her, even if she still insists on forging her own path forward. There was a nice balance between court intrigue and action. I was especially impressed by how well this short novel maintained a voice consistent with Burroughs. Aside from a couple of more modern turns of phrase, I could almost imagine I was reading a lost novel of Barsoom.

The book also contained a bonus novella, John Carter of Mars: Swords of the Mind by Geary Gravel. This story opens with John Carter on his way home from a visit to a friend at Mars’s south pole. He soon crosses paths with a damaged flier that belongs to his son Carthoris. Carter is able to catch up with the flier and get aboard. However, he finds it empty. Reasoning that Carthoris must have gotten in trouble and sent the flier on autopilot home so people would know to come looking for him, Carter sets the flier to take it back to where the flight started. The ship takes him to the hidden and mysterious city of Lothar, which is under the rule of a man named Tario, who can create soldiers with his mind who are so real, they can inflict damage on their opponents. Within the city’s walls, Carter discovers not his son, but his grandson Djon Dhin. It turns out Tario has taken him captive and is trying to teach him mind control powers so Djon Dhin can help him rule all of Barsoom. Tario has also captured Carthoris and is using him as leverage to bend Djon Dhin to his will.

John Carter of Mars: Swords of the Mind was a nicely balanced novella. Again, I felt like I was reading a lost Burroughs story. I liked how Gavel expanded the Burroughs cannon a little bit by explaining how the mammalian Martians engineered themselves to lay eggs as an adaptation to their difficult environment. He doesn’t expound on that idea much, but it was nice to see a thoughtful nod to one of the oddities of the Barsoom series. I was so impressed with both the short novel and novella that I plan to read more of the novels published by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. You can find their complete catalog online at: https://www.edgarriceburroughs.com/ which includes not only these newer books, but authorized editions of the original Edgar Rice Burroughs classic novels. The editions are also available from your favorite online retailers.

One of the things I have long appreciated about the Barsoom novels is how they sparked my imagination and helped me see Mars as a real place we could visit and explore. Sure its a fanciful Mars, but its not far off from how astronomers like Percival Lowell and Camille Flammarion imagined the red planet. When NASA scientist Steve Howell and I decided to compile the anthology Kepler’s Cowboys, we had Burroughs very much in our minds. In our case, we wanted to bring real exoplanets to life in the same way Burroughs brought Mars and Venus to life in his novels. You can learn more about Kepler’s Cowboys at: https://hadrosaur.com/KeplersCowboys.php

Establishing a New Dominion

It’s been a while since I’d read one of Fred Saberhagen’s Dracula novels, which I had been enjoying, so I decided to dive into the fifth book of the series, Dominion. Saberhagen casts Dracula in a heroic light and the first novel in the series, The Dracula Tape, is a retelling of Bram Stoker’s famous novel from Dracula’s point of view. In the second novel, Dracula teams up with Sherlock Holmes to solve a mystery. Starting with the third book, the series finds itself in the present day where some members of Dracula’s extended family have settled in Chicago. Dominion opens with a familiar face from the modern-era books, police detective Joe Keogh has been brought in to see if he can learn something about a rash of homeless people being murdered. This isn’t Joe’s regular beat, but he’s established a reputation for having informants who give him good insights. Sometimes it pays to have a vampire in your extended family!

Soon afterward, said vampire asks to meet with Joe. Currently Dracula is using the name Talisman and he asks Joe for help finding a missing sword. Next, we meet magician Simon Hill and his assistant Margie Hilbert, who are especially known for their mentalist act. Simon finds himself invited out into the country where a rich family has moved a castle stone-by-stone from France. The current generation has taken over the castle and is moving in. Simon’s invited to provide the entertainment for the housewarming. Although he’s convinced it’s a coincidence, we learn that Simon is distantly related to the family and spent time growing up around the grounds. He makes plans to sneak into the castle’s hidden passageways and secure Margie in a good location to make a surprise appearance at a key point during his performance.

The people who inherited the castle are Saul Littlewood and his wife Hildy. Also on the scene at the castle is Saul and Simon’s cousin Vivian, which is especially notable as she and Simon had something of a romantic fling years before. Meanwhile, a suspect has been identified in the murders. It turns out a serial killer from New Orleans named Carados, has been spotted in Chicago. We now meet a homeless man who calls himself Feather. Carados drugs Feather and takes him away for his nefarious aims.

With the weekend of the housewarming upon them, Simon and Margie drive out to the castle and secretly set their plans in motion. Without telling anyone in advance, they sneak into the secret passages from a hidden entrance on the grounds and make plans. Simon leaves Margie to wait for his signal, while he takes a little time to explore more of the passages. Soon Simon stumbles onto an old torture chamber where he finds Feathers tied up. Simon is quickly taken out of the picture for a time. Growing board while waiting for Simon, Margie also explores and finds the torture chamber. Carados and his henchmen give chase. Margie makes it outside and encounters Talisman, whose own research has brought him to the spot. Talisman and Margie are captured and brought back to the chamber. At that point, Feathers comes awake, becomes lucid and in a magical burst of energy sends both Margie and Talisman back in time to Arthurian Britain shortly before the Battle of Camlan where Artos will battle his son, the traitor Medraut. Fortunately, Feather also gives Margie the ability to understand the ancient speech of the time.

Not knowing that any of this has happened, Simon wakes up in a guest bedroom. After he gets his bearings, not certain how he got from the torture chamber to the room, he plans to go on with the performance as planned. However, as events unfold, he begins to realize that his cousin Vivian not only commands real magic, but is much, much older than he believed. It turns out that she’s also known as Nimue, the Lady of the Lake, and she’s out to establish a new dominion in the modern world.

Back in the past, Talisman and Margie must find clues about what happened to the missing sword and find their way back to the present. I enjoyed the idea of the magical figures from Arthurian legend clashing in the modern day and Saberhagen uses their magic effectively to tie the past into the present. That noted, Saberhagen wove a very intricate plot with many characters in a relatively short book. Unfortunately, this meant that many of the characterizations suffered and we didn’t really get to know many of the characters as well as I would have liked. Still, if you’re a fan of Arthurian fiction and are content for such fiction to include Dracula, this is a worthwhile read. The novel is readily available online at the most retailers.

Of course, this was also fascinating to me because my Scarlet Order vampires also have connections to the Arthurian story. Desmond Drake, the leader of the Scarlet Order mercenaries was a rival of King Arthur before he became a vampire. You can read their story in my novel Dragon’s Fall: Rise of the Scarlet Order Vampires. Learn more about the novel and read the first chapter at: http://davidleesummers.com/dragons_fall.html

Legenderry: A Steampunk Adventure

My 2011 novel Owl Dance, and really the entire subsequent Clockwork Legion Steampunk series, grew out of three short stories. In “The Persian Witch,” I introduced Ramon Morales, a sheriff from New Mexico, and Fatemeh Karimi, a healer from Persia as heroes with complimentary skills. They stood for right, even if they had to stand up to authority to make the right choices. In “Electric Kachinas,” Ramon and Fatemeh have their first brush with a visitor from the stars called Legion, an alien interested in all life and perhaps a little too willing to intervene with that life. Legion would go on to inspire humanity to develop new technologies to see where it would lead them. Finally, in “The Clockwork Lobo,” I introduced Ramon and Fatemeh to Professor Maravilla, an itinerant genius who had created a mechanical wolf to study real wolves. He showed how humans themselves often came up with ideas that hadn’t always reached fame and notoriety. It was interesting to see several of these ideas reflected in Bill Willingham’s graphic novel Legenderry: A Steampunk Adventure, which was comprised of seven comic books that began publication in 2013.

Featuring art by Sergio Fernandez Davila, Legenderry imagines a number of Dynamite Entertainment’s heroes and villains converging in a steampunk world. The book opens when a woman named Magda Spadarossa takes refuge in a club owned by Vampirella. Magda is being chased by a mysterious group of men in armor. However, Vampirella is able to quickly dispatch them. She and her friend, newspaper owner Brit Reid, soon discover the men are all identical. We also learn that Magda is searching for her sister, Sonja, better known to those of us who’ve read comics for a while as Red Sonja. Realizing something very dangerous is afoot, Brit disappears and reappears in his Green Hornet persona. Along with his partner, Kato, the Green Hornet spirits Magda off to an airship commanded by Captain Victory, so he can take her take her to the city of Landing, where she might get help from the famous Flash Gordon.

Meanwhile a cabal of villains including the likes of Ming the Merciless, General Tara, and Doctor Moreau have gathered to summon a demonic entity who will help them take over the world so they can divide up the spoils. Indeed back on Captain Victory’s airship, some of Doctor Moreau’s creations escape their crates, attempting to get their hands on Magda. Fortunately, test pilot Steve Austin is aboard with his pal Oscar Goldman. Steve was wounded in a heliogyro crash, but Oscar has built amazing prosthetics for him and dubbed him the “Six-Thousand Dollar Man.” The resulting battle destroys the airship and our heroes survive and make their way to a mysterious island, but are separated. Fortunately Magda is found by the mysterious Phantom and his sidekick, a mechanical wolf named Devil.

As Magda continues her journey, we learn that long ago, Flash Gordon and Ming the Merciless were locked in battle and crash landed on a primitive world. Ming had just taken a potion to give himself long life and disappears to contemplate what to do next. Flash started carefully sharing technology in hopes of advancing the world enough to build a rocket ship to return to his own world. He would portion out some technology, then go to a cryogenic container and sleep for a decade, then wake and portion out more technology. As such, it’s Flash Gordon who makes this a steampunk world.

All in all, Legenderry: A Steampunk Adventure proved a satisfying and action-packed tale that reimagined some familiar comic book and TV heroes in a steampunk milieu. My only disappointment is that it seemed to end on the penultimate battle. It felt like we needed two or three more issues for our heroes to finally come together and confront the cabal of master villains in an ultimate battle. Alas, this is sometimes the nature of comic books.

If you would like to check out my Clockwork Legion series, you will find epic heroes and villains, including some familiar faces from history such as Billy the Kid, Dimitri Mendeleev, and even Doc Holliday in a world altered by a creature from the stars. There will even be some chapters with a mechanical wolf! Learn more at http://davidleesummers.com/books.html#clockwork_legion

Luc Besson’s Dracula

I have long been a fan of Luc Besson’s films. His work is often based on and inspired by some of the great bandes dessinées, which are French-Belgium graphic novels. His classic science fiction film The Fifth Element was inspired by aspects of the bande dessinée Valerian and Laureline. His adaptation of The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec is one of my favorite Steampunk films. Although his direct adaptation of Valerian and Laureline wasn’t very well received by critics, I still thought it was a fun film. So, when I saw that Besson decided to adapt Dracula, I had to go see it.

Dracula is one of the novels most adapted to the screen. Almost every director who tries to adapt it finds some way to put their own unique spin on the material. So, when I went to see the film, I went in less wanting to see a literal retelling of Bram Stoker’s novel, but seeing what about the novel resonated with Besson.

Besson opens his movie in the distant past. Prince Vladimir of Wallachia played by Caleb Landry, has recently married his true love, Elisabeta, played by Zoë Bleu. Unfortunately the Ottomans are about to invade and Vladimir must lead the defense. He pleads with God to keep Elisabeta safe, then attempts to send her to safety, but unfortunately Ottoman agents corner and kill her. As a result, Vladimir renounces God and becomes a vampire, cursed to walk the Earth for eternity.

As time passes, Vladimir begins to travel. After an encounter with a woman who bore a passing resemblance to Elisabeta in Paris, he realizes she might be reincarnated. As such, Vladimir begins to make vampire minions to seek out Elisabeta. Jumping ahead to the nineteenth century, Vladimir has decided to buy property in Paris. Jonathan Harker played by Ewins Abid goes to his castle in Wallachia to finalize the deal. At that point, Dracula realizes that his fiance, Mina, is in fact the reincarnation of Elisabeta.

Meanwhile, Dr. Henry Spencer played by David Shields has captured one of Dracula’s vampire minions, Maria played by Matilda De Angelis, in Paris and a mysterious priest, played by Christoph Waltz, comes to study her. It turns out the priest is part of an order out to hunt down Dracula’s minions. They’ve come to realize if they kill Dracula, they might destroy all of his minions at once.

Dracula leaves Jonathan Harker a prisoner in his castle guarded by his gargoyle minions and journeys to Paris. Maria escapes her captivity and helps Dracula track down and seduce Mina. Although he struggles to awaken the memories of her past life, he convinces her to return with him to Wallachia. In the meantime Harker has escaped and he joins forces with Dr. Spencer and the priest. They lay siege to the castle setting the final confrontation between the forces of good and evil.

The storyline of Dracula becoming a vampire after losing his love and then seeking her reincarnation later feels like an expansion of Francis Ford Coppola’s film Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The impression is all the more prominent given how much Caleb Landry’s makeup as old Dracula resembles Gary Oldman’s makeup from Coppola’s film. That said, I liked some of the original ways Besson interpreted the material. My wife and I realized that Maria is, in effect, a combination of the Renfield and Lucy characters from the novel and she makes a delightful new approach to both characters. Christoph Waltz’s priest was wonderful to watch and I liked how his relationship with Dr. Spencer is not a simple reinterpretation of Van Helsing and Arthur Holmwood from the novel, it’s almost a literal team up of science and faith to fight evil. Dracula’s living gargoyle minions were also a fun addition to the story. That noted, the true star of the film felt like Danny Elfman’s standout soundtrack.

In the final analysis, Luc Besson’s Dracula isn’t one of the best interpretations of the source material and it’s not even one of the best Luc Besson films. However, it does experiment with the source material in some fun and interesting ways and I did like seeing how he experimented with some ideas Coppola introduced in his film. I do plan to give the film another watch or two. Who knows, it might even inspire some new stories. To see some of my stories inspired by classic vampire literature and folktales, you might enjoy the fun collection Vermillion Highways, which is available at: http://davidleesummers.com/Vermillion-Highways.html

A League of the Extraordinary

This weekend finds me at Wild Wild West Con in Tucson, Arizona. If you’re in town and able to come to the event, please drop in to the dealer’s room or see me on one of my panels. This is one of those rare conventions I have been fortunate enough to attend every year it’s been held and this will be the final year. I’m looking forward to this being an event to remember. One of the things I have loved about this convention is that it’s a very immersive steampunk convention where people really get into the spirit of the event and dress up. Over the years, both at this convention and at other events, we have delved into the question of what steampunk is and where it started. At its heart, I’ve long felt that steampunk celebrates science fiction’s eighteenth and nineteenth century roots. It looks to works like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds and tells stories in a similar milieu. Of course, those works are just early science fiction. Who told the first steampunk stories which looked back at the past and told stories in the style of those earlier works? I once heard an interesting case made that Edgar Rice Burroughs could be considered the father of steampunk. After all, in Burroughs’ first novel, John Carter was a post-Civil War soldier who finds himself transported to a very retrofuturistic Mars. Meanwhile, At the Earth’s Core also has very steampunkish Victorian elements.

One truly standout work of steampunk literature is the graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill. This book literally brought many of the great heroes from Victorian adventure fiction together to battle a seemingly insurmountable menace. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bill Willingham took some inspiration from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen when he realized that the Edgar Rice Burroughs canon consists of a rather extraordinary group of heroes and villains who could be brought together for a truly epic team-up against some rather implacable foes. His graphic novel The Greatest Adventure, released by Dynamite Publishing in 2017 did just that.

Featuring art by Cezar Razek, The Greatest Adventure imagines that Tarzan villain Count Rokoff and a band of Black Martians have captured a fabulous space vessel from the planet Poloda. Rokoff has also captured Jason Gridley, whose Gridley Wave has been used to communicate with many of Burroughs’ worlds including Pellucidar, Mars, and Venus. He wants Gridley to use the technology of several worlds to build the ultimate weapon, which will give him and his battleship almost Death Star-like powers. Fortunately Gridley escapes in a fighter craft before Rokoff can find the one piece he needs to complete his weapon, a legendary crystal which can only be found on a lost island inhabited by dinosaurs.

Although Gridley hopes to make it home to California, he finds that his craft will make it no further than Africa, so he seeks out Tarzan and his wife, Jane Porter. Willingham is well acquainted with the Tarzan canon and knows that Lord Graystoke has considerable resources and is a leader to be reckoned with. Lord and Lady Graystoke summon their children and head to New Mexico to build team of heroes culled from the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Among them are Ulysses Paxton who brings a sky ship from Mars and the team sets out to seek the missing crystal before Rokoff can lay his hands on it. When they reach the island, they find the crystal has been taken to Pellucidar at the center of the Earth. Our heroes follow only to find that Rokoff has beaten them to it and departed for Mars.

Of course our heroes are hot on the villain’s tail. When they reach Mars, it doesn’t take long for Tarzan, Jane, and Gridley to team up with John Carter and Dejah Thoris. All in all, I found this a satisfying and fun adventure that honored the heroes of Edgar Rice Burroughs. I didn’t know all of the characters, but the graphic novel made me want to get to know them better through the source material. I’ll be certain to seek out more of the adventures of Carson of Venus, Tarzan and Jane, and Jason Gridley Was this collection steampunk? I certainly think it had the retrofuturistic, steampunk-like vibe many of Burroughs’ stories maintained.

My own Clockwork Legion steampunk series is about a group of unlikely heroes banding together to thwart an emperor’s ambitions to capture the United States. In many ways, my series owes a strong debt of gratitude to adventure stories such as those written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. You can learn more about my series at: http://davidleesummers.com/books.html#clockwork_legion

Wild Wild West Con 14

The Wild Wild West Con Steampunk convention will be running from Thursday, March 19 through Sunday, March 22 at the Westward Look Resort in Tucson, Arizona.You can find all the details or buy tickets online at: https://www.wildwestcon.com/

War on the frontier!
Magic marches with the Clockwork Kingdom,
but the Rust Rebels will not bow.
At WWWC14, the frontier fractures and two legends rise, locked in epic conflict.

From gilded towers and spellbound halls, the Clockwork Kingdom rules with arcane grace. Nobles wield enchanted engines, mythical beasts stalk polished courtyards, and every tick of the clock hums with ancient magic.

But across the rust-choked wilds, the Rust Rebels surge: fierce, fearless, and free. They scavenge the wreckage, bend science to their will, and forge broken steel into revolution.

Two forces. One world on the brink. The choice is yours!

The Clockwork Kingdom vs. The Rust Rebels — Where Steampunk fairy tales collide with post-apocalyptic dystopia!

The Westward Look Resort is a beautiful place for this event. Nestled on 80 acres of the Sonoran Desert foothills, the historic Westward Look, originally a 1912 hacienda, offers steampunk-styled sanctuary with modern indulgences. Sip handcrafted cocktails by lush citrus and hummingbird gardens, unwind in sparkling pools or soak in hot tubs after a day of adventure, and relax in spacious casitas featuring private balconies overlooking Titan-like saguaros and the Catalina Mountains. With its full-service Sonoran Spa, eight tennis and pickleball courts, guided horseback and hiking trails, and over 30,000 ft of gathering spaces, this oasis becomes our Clockwork Kingdom’s grand stronghold – or the perfect hideout for the Rust Rebels!

Of course I’ll be involved in some events related to this year’s epic theme. My schedule is as follows:

Thursday, March 19

1pm – Mesa Room – Rebels of Astronomy. The 19th century was a time when astronomers were pushing boundaries and trying new things. Women were even getting into the act. Learn about the rebellious astronomers of the Victorian age and how they transformed our understanding of the planets and even the universe.

4pm – Canyon Room – The Author’s Panel. The authors of Wild Wild West Con gather and tell you about their latest work and answer your questions about being a writer.

5:30pm – Mesa Room – Drake & McTrowell’s Hot Potato School of Writing™. Join Chief Inspector Erasmus Drake and Dr. Sparky McTrowell as they host this gameshow where audience members and celebrity authors get together and cobble together an impromptu story based on fun story prompts. You can never tell where those prompts will lead!

Saturday, March 21

1pm – Canyon Room – Fairy Tales Revisited. Join Chief Inspector Erasmus Drake, Dr. Sparky McTrowell and I as we discuss our favorite fairy tales. We also look at approaches to steampunking them. How much work does this take to do it organically?

Of course, I will also have a vendor space at Wild Wild West Con where I’ll have my new collection of Vampire short stories, Vermillion Highways, the special collector’s USB Card of Museum of the Omniverse: Dragon Exhibit, and copies of Lyn McConchie’s The City – Sideways. You’ll find the booth in the Sonoran Room. I hope you’ll drop by so I can introduce you to your next favorite read!

From Revelation to Genesis

Last month, I discussed Paul Darrow’s novelized sequel to the television series Blakes 7 titled Lucifer. In the TV series, Darrow played Kerr Avon, a computer genius who was recruited from a prison ship by the series’ title character Roj Blake to fight against the oppression of the oppressive Earth Federation. By the time the series reached the end of its fourth and final season in 1981, Avon was one of the two characters who appeared in the largest number of episodes. Perhaps surprisingly, Garreth Thomas’s Blake was not the other one. Instead the other was talented thief Vila Restal played by Michael Keating.

As noted in my review of the novel Lucifer, we learn that Avon is the only member of Blake’s band of freedom fighters to have survived the series. At the end of that novel, Avon was reunited with the supercomputer Orac and had confronted his nemesis and one-time Federation President Servalan. As the sequel opens, Avon and Orac are on the run from just about every power faction in the known galaxy, including mercenaries sent by the leaders of the Federation and Chinese agents who are seeking to take power when the Federation inevitably falls. Both power factions want to get their hands on Orac for their own purposes. However, Orac is exactly the thing that gives Avon an edge with so many people after him. Orac helps him infiltrate a pirate stronghold to get fuel for his ship, which doesn’t endear him to the pirates at all.

In effect, the first of the sequels is the story of Avon and Orac on the run while the galaxy’s powerful and elite conduct their machinations to see who will ultimately control the galaxy and exercise control over the vast panoply of humanity. The machinations feel like the stuff of Shakespearean drama as the rich and powerful unleash plots to take down their rivals and send assassins against each other. Meanwhile, Avon does what he can to stay out of anyone’s crosshairs while ultimately trying to figure out what his ultimate objective really is.

All of this really sets up the final and best book of the trilogy, Lucifer: Genesis. The final novel picks up where the second one left off. Avon is on the run and those who survived the political maneuverings of the previous book want to get their hands on Orac. Of those in power, only the Chinese seem to take the philosophical perspective that they might ultimately build an even better computer given time. Still, they don’t want Orac to fall in anyone else’s hands before they can accomplish that feat. At this point, the novel steps back in time to the beginning of Blakes 7.

Now we’re taken back before the beginning of the series. We learn how a young girl is born to a band of pirates. The band is destroyed by the president of the Europa Federation Kyril Alan and his daughter takes the girl to raise as her own. She’s named Seraph Alan but comes to be known as Servalan. Of course the Europa Federation becomes an integral part of what will be the Terran Federation. Meanwhile, Blake recruits his freedom fighters, including Avon. As the book proceeds, we are treated to scenes not shown on the series. We have conversations between Blake and Avon that examine their relationship. Later, when Blake is gone, Vila and the others try to decide if they’re still even in the freedom-fighting business under Avon. Of course, Avon and Servalan confront one another and realize they are two sides of a similar coin.

At last the book returns to where it started. Avon decides the only thing left for him to do is return to Earth. Of course, given all that’s happened, Avon is unlikely to be welcomed as a hero and we soon realize that in the end, his only friend and companion is none other than the AI, Orac.

All in all, I found Darrow’s novels a fitting and satisfying end to the tale of Blakes 7. That said, it’s certainly not the only possible ending and if I explore others, I might find there are others I would enjoy more. Still, if you’re a fan of the series, I think this trilogy is worth a look. If anyone reading this has read them and perhaps other sequels, I’d enjoy hearing what you thought and what other sequels you might recommend.

This journey of a heroic outlaw growing old and then returning to Earth reminded me of my Space Pirates’ Legacy series. In the first volume we meet pirate Ellison Firebrandt and his crew. In The Pirates of Sufiro, he’s marooned on a planet and builds a life there. As events in the galaxy transpire around him, he ultimately must act to save the Earth that abandoned him. You can learn more about my series at http://davidleesummers.com/books.html#pirate_legacy

Dating Dracula

I love the feel of a good book in my hands. However, I have also come to appreciate my Kindle because I can carry around a library in a single device. Inside the Kindle app itself, Amazon decided to create “challenges.” You get kudos if you read in your app if you meet certain milestones, such as reading every day for a week. It’s pretty clear the whole thing is designed to encourage you to keep reading and then buy more ebooks. To be honest, I don’t need much encouragement to read, so I don’t always pay these challenges much mind. Still, every now and then they’re fun to look at. Every three months they present a set of mystery challenges and usually at least one of those is designed to get you to read a book in a certain genre. Being February, last month’s challenge revolved around Valentine’s Day and encouraged the reader to go read a romance book from a selection of some 8,800 books. Now, one of the pieces of advice I regularly give is to read widely and read outside your normal genres. You often pick up tricks you might have missed sticking to your own genre. While I don’t tend to read a lot of romance, I do tend to have romantic subplots in my science fiction and horror. After all, romance is part of life. So, I browsed the list until I found something I thought would be fun to read, which is how I came upon Dating Dracula by Kinsley Adams.

As the novel opens, vampires have just announced their existence to the world. The Queen of Vampires, Genevieve, is negotiating with the President of the United States about vampire rights and how vampires can feed openly without causing undo distress. As this is happening, vlogger Anna Perish and her friend Lucy travel to New Orleans. Anna hopes to infiltrate one of the Crescent City’s biggest vampire hot spots to prove that vampires are taking blood illegally. She spots a guarded room and gets Lucy to cause a distraction so she can get inside. This all goes amazingly well and Anna finds herself facing a vampire orgy. Literally, she finds vampires and humans having sex and vampires drinking blood from them. Just as she starts to capture this on her cell phone, a vampire swoops in, takes her out to a back alley and drains her dry.

Fortunately, Vlad Dracula was nearby for reasons that will be made clear as the novel progresses. He finds Anna out in the alley and gives her his vampire blood in time to turn her into a vampire. She wakes up in Vlad’s house three days later. As it turns out, Vlad is breathtakingly handsome and a real gentleman, albeit a bit old-fashioned. Adams does make a point of noting that although he is the real Dracula “immortalized” by Bram Stoker, he is not the human Vlad the Impaler. I thought was an interesting idea since I had the similar notion in my Scarlet Order Vampire novels, but she does give the idea her own spin.

As Anna’s sire, it’s Vlad’s responsibility to show her the vampire ropes, so to speak. He needs to teach her to drink blood. Young vampires in this series are almost uncontrollably ravenous – another concept I use in my fiction. In her version this leads to Anna attacking Vlad’s human butler. Fortunately tragedy is averted and Anna is relegated to drinking blood from bags until her appetite gets under control – again vampires drinking from blood bags is an idea I use regularly in my books. It turns out that in this world, most vampires keep “harems” of humans to drink a little from each day. The humans find the feeding pleasurable and the vampires don’t take enough to kill them. As such, Anna realizes she wouldn’t have uncovered very much in her quest to expose vampires as fiendish monsters.

Just as Anna is coming to terms with being a vampire, she realizes someone is stalking her. It turns out the vampire who drained her dry is actually something of a serial killer and he’s angry that Anna didn’t actually die. He wants to finish the job. Normally, Dracula and the other vampires might just bring him to justice. However, it turns out that this vampire is the queen’s own sire and is older than Dracula himself.

All in all, I found Dating Dracula an engaging vampire novel. I especially liked that Kinsley Adams tells the story with a very tongue-in-cheek voice. The romance between Vlad and Anna is definitely the focus, and we do have several of the romance tropes, such as Anna being unsure of herself at times and wondering if Vlad really finds her attractive. Fortunately, Adams does just enough of this to make Anna feel believable and not so much that it gets tiresome as I’ve found in some romance novels. I liked the exploration of what it meant for Anna’s relationships with her family and her friend Lucy now that she’s a vampire. I also liked that Adams doesn’t give her vampires retractable fangs – again, this is the same as my books. I did it partly because most creatures with fangs can’t retract them and it makes it a challenge for vampires to keep their nature hidden. Adams also does this, and like me, uses it to some humorous effect.

Now, I’ve made a point of noting several similarities between the world of Dating Dracula and my Scarlet Order Vampire novels. None of these bothered me because Ms. Adams used them in her own unique way and – aside from my choice to say that Vlad the Impaler was human and most definitely not the vampire Dracula – I’ve seen plenty of other authors use these ideas as well. It just struck me that I don’t remember seeing so many of these ideas in one place. As it turns out, there’s a scene in the novel where the characters visit Boutique du Vampyre in New Orleans. Dating Dracula was released in 2021, after I’ve done signings in that very shop. As such, I couldn’t help but wonder if Kinsley Adams had been there and read one or two of my novels and took some inspiration. If so, that would be fun to know.

I found Dating Dracula on Amazon. If you’d like to visit Boutique du Vampyre’s website and explore the world of the Scarlet Order Vampires, you can do so at: https://www.feelthebite.com/collections/vampire-library-books-for-sale

The Fall of Barsoom

I remember going to the library with my older brother when I was in elementary school. He suggested that I should pick out a book – one of the novels for adults, not a kid’s book and not a movie or TV tie-in. He was encouraging me to try out a world that was only in print. I checked out a copy of The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs because I liked space and I liked chess. I remember the book being weird and wonderful with strange spider-like creatures who controlled headless, humanoid drones to play Jetan, the Martian version of chess in Burroughs’ world.

I went back to read the first book in the series, A Princess of Mars some months later and fell in love with Dejah Thoris and befriended green fighting man Tars Tarkas alongside series hero, John Carter. I also came to see how Burroughs depicted Mars as a dying world of dried-up oceans and barely holding an atmosphere. In fact, it only had an atmosphere in Carter’s time because of technology built by an earlier generation of Martians.

Much as I loved the books, I was still a nerdy science kid who couldn’t help but be a little incensed that the books depicted a Mars that couldn’t be. After all, the Viking Lander had recently shown us that Mars was just an empty desert, even more barren than the Mojave Desert near where I grew up. Undoubtedly, this was much of the reason that it took me a long time before I sat down and actually made a concerted effort to read the series. When I did, I was struck by how rich a world Burroughs created in eleven short novels. Admittedly, there are contradictions and some of larger-than-life exploits feel almost laughable, but it occurred to me that the series could have continued on long after Burroughs if his estate had allowed it.

While there are only one or two licensed novels that I know of set on the Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs, or Barsoom as the natives call it, the world has been explored and expanded upon several times in comic book form. Recently, I read Warlord of Mars: Fall of Barsoom, which is a prequel to the John Carter-era novels and seems to have been timed to precede the 2012 Disney film. Set 100,000 years before John Carter is first transported to Mars, this series of comics, which have been collected into graphic novel form, imagine Mars when it still had oceans and the native atmosphere was waning.

Written by Robert Place Napton and illustrated by Roberto Castro, we’re introduced to Tak Nan Lee, a scientist who has discovered a way to replenish the waning atmosphere of Mars by using the power of the “Ninth Ray” of sunlight. Tak Nan Lee has created his invention so that all of Mars will survive and when one of the red Martian women is found near his laboratory, he brings her in so he can teach her and her people how to operate the equipment. We also meet Van Tun Bor, a general who must defend the Martian country of Orovar and Tak Nan Lee’s atmosphere lab from outland tribes who are seeking shelter and oxygen on the dying world. If they break through, they could destroy Tak Nan Lee’s work. They all answer to the Jeddak of Orovar, a prince who has his own designs on the atmosphere lab.

Reading the graphic novel, I came to appreciate that Burroughs had given us a backstory for Mars that imagined the difficulties of a world undergoing climate change. He imagined new technologies being developed to stave off the worst effects. He imagined the social pressures that happen as people are driven from the hardest hit areas to less unpleasant climes. While the details of the “science” Burroughs invented seem silly over a century after the publication of A Princess of Mars, he gave us a lot of serious things to consider when imagining living on a planet going through climate change. He also gave us hope. I like that Burroughs suggests that science can help and that Martians (and metaphorically, humans) can learn to adapt to their world if they can avoid doing too much harm. The graphic novel feels like a plausible prequel and presents fun earlier versions of the technology we would see in Burroughs’ novels. It adds to the lore by warning us to be wary of politicians who would use technology for their own selfish aims instead of allowing it to benefit the world as a whole.

The collected edition of Warlord of Mars: Fall of Barsoom was published by Dynamite Comics and is available at Amazon or wherever fine books are sold. I pay homage to the Barsoom of Edgar Rice Burroughs when my intrepid explorers visit Mars in my novel The Solar Sea.

The City – Sideways

As I promised on Saturday, today marks the release of Lyn McConchie’s latest short story collection from Hadrosaur Productions entitled The City—Sideways. The first two collections I edited, The Way-Out Wild West and Far Side of the Wild West, explored the weird side of the Western United States, imagining lawmen, teachers, and ranchers dealing with mad scientists, ghosts, and aliens largely in the nineteenth century. That said, Lyn has never been a writer to be pigeonholed and some of the stories were set in the present day. Unlike her earlier collections for Hadrosaur, The City—Sideways is set in Wellington, New Zealand and most of the stories are set in the near past or the present, but as the title implies, not everything is it appears at first glance. Sometimes if you view the city sideways, you see things you might have missed the first time. Here’s the cover and the official description:

Cities can seem like living, breathing organisms. They have networks of roads, power, and plumbing. They can have their own personalities. They can grow and change with time. And yet, cities can also seem timeless. It’s possible a city can hold all of the times and all of the places it has ever been, and that if you look sideways in just the right way, sometimes you can see those other times and places. And sometimes, if you need to do it badly enough, you can see a time and a place that is yet to come.

Through these fifteen short stories you’ll travel with Lyn McConchie to Wellington, New Zealand, where she will take you to places that might not be on the tourist maps. She’ll introduce you to statues that defend the innocent. She’ll take you to penthouse rooftops where birds thought extinct might reappear. She’ll show us the doorways in the subway that can take us to other times and places. She’ll even show you websites that you can only find when you really need them. But you can only make this trip if you’re willing to look at the city—sideways.

This was a fun collection to edit. Lyn largely focuses on a couple of families who cross paths in their journey through the city and across the years. I’m sure you’ll enjoy getting to know Nerida Paiwai, Granny Ngaire, Tina Salton, and Icarus, the Haast’s Eagle as much as I did. I was reminded of some of Ray Bradbury’s collections, which could almost be read as novels. I was also reminded of many Twilight Zone stories set in the present day but where somewhat unexpected things happen.

The cover art is courtesy Luca Oleastri and shows a mysterious back alley in a big city. I felt it captured the mystery of the city and the ways that time doesn’t always flow in a straight line in this collection.

You can find the collection at the following locations:

Paperback

Ebook