The Ghost That Haunts the Superstition Mountains.interior artwork by Molly Crabapple187.shortfiction by Genevieve Valentine169.interior artwork by Gregory Manchess27.essay by John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley1.essay by John Joseph AdamsStory Notes (Under the Moons of Mars).Introduction (Under the Moons of Mars).
BARSOOM CLOTHING FULL
I don't think I could recommend this to casual readers who did not already have a familiarity with Barsoom.A full list of the stories and contributors (from ISFD) follows:ix I'm not sure which of these two is my favorite of the book.I could have loved this book but a few misses in the mix leave me with just a like. Better though were the last two, Catherine Valente's extraordinarily moving "Coming of Age in Barsoom" and Jonathan Maberry's heroic feeling "The Death Song of Dwar Guntha". However the end was very sketchy and the story felt quite incomplete. I expected Stirling to be good because of his own novel "The Sky People", and his entry here "The Jasoom Project" was one of the better ones. There were a couple that skewed a bit wrong for me. The story was so wrong I got mad.After the Beagle disaster poisoned the well, I approached the later stories with some internal caution. There was the germ of an interesting idea, but it was rendered horribly. Tarzan, and John Carter in particular, will not be found here. Instead Beagle did it with less than 20 pages of stinkbomb. When I read the first two stories here I thought it would take a dozen mighty Tharks to tear the smile off my face. I knew we were in trouble before the second paragraph was finished. What Beagle writes though is an epic fail - clearly no sense whatsoever of who John Carter and Tarzan are. Beagle write "The Ape-Man of Mars"? Tarzan meets John Carter. "Three Deaths" by David Barr Kirtley follows and is yet again a great short story - one can tell that both these authors get it. Lansdale really nails Burroughs in this steampunky spin. Among my favorites was the leadoff story "The Metal Men of Mars" by Joe R Lansdale which immediately transported me to Barsoom with John Carter and the incomparable Dejah Thoris. The collection is bookended with two of the best stories starting it off and concluding with the other two best stories. I won't attempt to review and rate each story here. Some of the pictures are really great, but there are a few that just didn't do it for me, or were in a style that did not seem to match the Barsoomian visions created in the past.There is included a brief, heartfelt introduction by Tamora Pierce and an Appendix/Glossary/Gazetteer by Burrough's enthusiast Richard Lupoff. Each story and illustration is by someone different, so we have a total of 28 approaches to the idea. The illustrations could have all been fabulous, but they vary quite a bit in style and success. It is nice to have each story illustrated. Having recently re-read "A Princess of Mars", the timing of this new collection was perfect for me.
The stories range from bad to excellent, but most are passable unless you get tortured by bending Barsoomian canon a bit. This love song to Barsoom has 14 stories and 14 illustrations. This homage to Edgar Rice Burroughs' stories set on Barsoom came off not as well as I had hoped.
0 kommentar(er)
