By Mark Eidemiller
(free download here)
This book was
something of a bittersweet experience for me, on several levels. I
must admit I went into this last published – so far – book in The
Bronze Saga with a bit of a sense of foreboding. From 'way back
when I first heard about The Bronze Saga through Eidemiller's guest appearance on The Book Cave podcast last year, I
remember him telling hosts Ric Croxton and Art Sippo that this story
leaves Doc Savage and his companions in a rather darker place than
previous books. And it does. Not to spoil specifics, Doc himself is
left severely injured by the end, while another member of his
original band of brothers shuffles off this mortal coil. Moreover,
the primary villain of the piece – who is indeed Doc's opponent in
the last adventure published in the original pulp series – escapes
and will doubtless return, almost certainly in the next volume which
is rumored to be the last book that Eidemiller foresees for the
“Christian Adventures of Doc Savage.” We unfortunately cannot
know how long it might be before that next story appears, however.
Briefly, in this
story we find out more about Perry Liston's background and confront
the problem of quasi-Christian cults of the likes of Jonestown and
the Branch Davidians. To give away much more than that and what I
say above would be to give away too much. As usual, I'd prefer you
read it yourself. It's good. But I must also admit that for whatever
reason I found this a slightly less engaging story than usual.
Perhaps it was my
not wanting the ride to end for now that made it so. That's the only
real explanation I can come up with. I first speculated that it was
the very different overall feel that results from the new
circumstances our heroes find themselves in, commanding what is
essentially a secretive futuristic paramilitary humanitarian aid
organization based on a flying Fortress of Solitude I can only liken
to the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. My gut reaction was that that
departs too much from the typically well-grounded realism that
pervades the earlier books. Of course as quickly as I thought that,
I recalled Perry's “magic” ring* as well as the other
fantastic elements that have appeared so far, from the Time Tunnel to
Superman. I've read that, if Doc Savage were a character in the
modern age, in order to duplicate the pulp-era fantasticism he would
have to be delving beyond such cutting edge scientific frontiers as
parallel dimensions and space travel, at the very least – for all
intents and purposes he and his band would be having adventures much
like the Fantastic Four. There has of course been a great
deal of that all along in The Bronze Saga, including the sense
of family that is at the core of the best F4 stories. In fact
it has been a slow and steady build from the first story, that had
little of that as Doc is reintroduced to the world from which he'd
been absent for half a century, through gradual introduction of more
and more until the current book unleashes the high tech full force.
Actually, come to think of it it wasn't quite so steady of late,
because there is quite a shift from the down to earth legal
wranglings of the previous story to this one, with barely a scene at
the end of Trial revealing what was to come. Maybe a story of
them getting acclimated to their new life would have smoothed the
transition? Of course, I can understand Eidemiller, once he'd come
up with the new toys (with the help of Barry Ottey, credited on the
website with the
design of the Orion), wanting to play with them! Or maybe it
was the greater sense of the inexplicable, with their adversary this
go'round being literally a demon from hell with all kinds of
supernatural abilities including the ability to launch an assault via
stone golems become animate!
I've not actually read the last
original Doc Savage adventure that this one plays off of, only
knowing it through Eidemiller's frequent references to it as setting
up the circumstances for Doc's long sleep, as well as Philip José
Farmer's discussion of it in his faux biography, Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, so I have no real idea how
much of a comparable sense of the truly supernatural (as opposed to
seeming supernatural that usually turn out to have reasonable if
pseudoscientific explanations) is present in Up from Earth's
Center. My gut reaction was that here it changed the tone of the
story a bit too radically, but hopefully that's just my reaction and
not that of most readers, because overall this is another enjoyable
addition to the continuing story, and given the character and story
histories one that needed to be told in some form or another.
And we definitely
are left with unanswered questions: Will Doc recover? What
malevolence is Wail going to unleash on him next? If the next is
indeed the last time we'll be able to visit these characters in this
setting, what rousing climactic sense of closure will Eidemiller
achieve?
In the meantime,
now that I've finished The Bronze Saga as it currently stands,
I will soon turn my attention to Eidemiller's first professionally
published novel, As Iron Sharpens Iron. I purchased the Kindle edition a long
time ago, but have hitherto held off reading it because as I
understand it the main character is Perry Liston but not the Bronze
Saga Perry Liston. …? My understanding is that the name was
originally used by Eidemiller for earlier writing attempts long
before The Bronze Saga, and that since his use of the Doc
Savage characters is totally unauthorized this must be a separate
continuity altogether, but I am curious if there is any unspoken
relationship (is it perhaps “our” Perry's uncle?), and if there
is not I would have expected him to have changed the character's
name. It's his choice, of course, but I didn't want to blur my
conceptions of the characters before I had to, hence my delay in
taking on Iron.
Cheers, and Thanks
for reading!
* * *
* Random Rambling:
Wouldn't it be cool if it turned out that the One Ring had somehow
reformed itself after being cast into Mount Doom and passed down
through the ages, ultimately into Liston's family? We could tie the
Bronze Saga into J. R. R. Tolkien's great work!
Maybe Wail is really Sauron? Maybe Perry's uncle discovered it and
when he used it the first time it allowed Sauron to return and
bedevil Doc the first time? Maybe Perry's own use of late has
allowed Sauron to return again...? Feel free to use this idea if you
like, Mark – although I'm sure you have your own much better
backstory for the Liston Ring. Whatever it is, please make it
something that will be revealed before you wrap up this series. -
Kent
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