By Mark E. Eidemiller (free download here)
In this the tenth and ostensibly final installment of the Bronze
Saga, a.k.a. the “Christian Adventures of Doc Savage,” Mark
Eidemiller works with characters whom he as come to know intimately
well. Not just Doc Savage and his extended group of companions that
has steadily grown over the past decade and more, including
Eidemiller's usual p.o.v. character Perry Liston, but to a degree far
beyond his cameos in past volumes, he himself, Mark Eidemiller of
Portland, Oregon, plays a critical role in the story and shares in the
life-changing events with which it culminates. Eidemiller plainly
indulges in a great deal of wish fulfillment as he dons what Grant
Morrison dubbed his “fiction suit” (see here) – over which he gets to put on a flight suit as well –
and soars like a hawk into battle alongside Doc Savage himself in the
climactic confrontation with a villain literally out of a James
Bond novel.
And I do mean that literally. I'm not sure why, in this
shamelessly unauthorised volume in a series of fan-fiction that has
throughout its run used numerous copyrighted characters sans
permission, Eidemiller chose to thinly veil the identities of these
particular characters, but I don't think I really depended on my Ph.D. to
know exactly who “John Fleming” and his acquaintances were from
the first moment they appeared. And when “Fleming” was referred
to as “Agent Oh-Fourteen” I had to groan. (Actually, “Fleming's”
bride who was killed years before mere hours after their wedding,
revenge for which drives him for much of the story, did retain her
original name, I believe, but none others.) In any case I mentally
read “Bond” (and visualized an elderly Sean Connery, albeit
beardless) whenever I saw “Fleming” throughout.
The gists of the converging plots are these: Mark Eidemiller has
received divine inspiration that it is of crucial importance that he
be aboard the Clark Savage Institute's “helicarrier” ('cause
that's what I'll always think of it as) at some point in the near
future. Meanwhile, the most bitter arch-enemy from “Fleming's”
buried past returns, having discovered a means to utilize
nanotechnology to induce either rejuvenation or rapid aging. He uses
the former to return “Fleming” to the prime of life – but only
to destroy him by framing him for a heinous crime for which the best
he could hope would be a long second lifetime in prison. The latter
he means to use to blackmail the world's richest countries or see the
populations of their most important cities die of old age within a
matter of hours. (Okay – unlike my question regarding the
seemingly unnecessary changing of the name of fictional characters
folded into this story, it's perfectly understandable why Miley
“Hannah Montana” Cyrus' name was changed when, right off the bat,
she becomes the first victim of what the world dubs the
“Dorian Gray Virus.”) The stories come together when, on a
vacation in the Bahamas, Perry Liston and his wife Dot, along with
Mitch Drake and his lover, lounge singer Jill Woodward, are drawn
into “Fleming's” plight when one of Jill's backup singers becomes
an innocent victim in the villain's plot against him.
As hinted in that quick overview of the setup, Doc Savage himself is
less a central character than usual, rather taking a bit of a back
seat for a good bit of the story to Perry and Mark, as well as to
“Fleming.” Doc is definitely there, but he's still having a
difficult time adjusting to the physical limitations imposed on him
by the serious injuries suffered in the previous book – and, it
turns out, to the knowledge that for a second time confrontation with
Wail has goaded him into acting recklessly with devastating results.
But Doc does rally, in part due to spiritual counselling from
Eidemiller, and plays a more central role in the later phases of the
story.
I don't think it's too big a spoiler to say that, in the end, all
works out, and indeed our characters are left in a much better place
than they had begun after the end of the previous book. Indeed, how
exactly that comes to be – the journey, so to speak – is the real
fun of this story. Because Eidemiller truly is a gifted writer.
Nevertheless, when I wrote above of “life-changing events” I
meant that literally as well. Not just for the Eidemillers – Mark
and his wife Karen, in whose cases the “wish fulfillment” aspect
I also mentioned earlier results in cures of their respective
physical ailments (I wish I could avail myself of nanotech to
lose a few pounds) – as well as Doc, but for the world at large
although it does not know it yet. In fact, by the end of this novel,
my feeling is that the world the Bronze Saga series takes
place in has diverged so far from the world we inhabit that, as much
as I will miss seeing the further adventures of these characters, I
believe that Eidemiller is making a wise decision to put it behind
him and concentrate on his other series, The Irons Alliance,
which world is admittedly by the “present” considerably different
from our own, but has been virtually from the beginning. For myself,
at least, part of the charm of the series early on was that it seemed
very much to bring Doc Savage into our own world – with a few
tweaks necessary to do so – but as events and developments
progressed, not least bringing more and more “fictional”
characters into the stories, but even moreso the development of ever
more fantastic technologies that necessarily will change the world,
it is less and less “our own world.” One of Hare's Rules of
History®,
introduced in my first lecture in World Civ: “Technological
change always has social consequences.” It's an inevitable
conundrum facing any kind of “realistic” fantastic fiction that
it may start in our world but will inevitably create a different
world. The Bronze Saga installments have been tracking along
more or less in real time (a bit of time lag, actually, but my sense
is that each novel was pretty much locked into the general time when
Eidemiller initially plotted the story, with the time lag
constituting his writing, editing, and putlishing time. But in order
to keep it ostensibly “our world” the consequences of events and
technologies introduced along the way cannot realistically be
followed through. In the Irons Alliance stories, on the other
hand, starting in the past, Eidemiller can (presumably) work his way
up to a present that we have only seen a glimpse of at this point,
but which is, again, pretty different from our world – at least if
that's his plan rather than set all his stories subsequent to the
retrospective origin related in As Iron Sharpens Iron in the
already different present world. In either case, it seems to me he has a
great deal more latitude.
That's not to say that all questions raised along the way in this
series are answered by the end of this “last” book. Eidemiller
does leave the possibility open for future stories, should the
inspiration take him. Most disappointingly for me, the mystery of
Perry Liston's “magic” ring only deepens as we find out that the
recently deceased Johnny Littlejohn knew more about it than he'd ever
let on, and yet we – and Perry – are left with no real
explanation for how Perry's namesake uncle who bequeathed it to him
had come to have it in the first place, nor more importantly, what
it was. I've previously speculated that perhaps a way could be
devised to connect it with the One Ring, long (thought?) destroyed in
the fires of Mount Doom, perhaps those fires rather simply purified
it of the malevolent spirit of Sauron. Here I'll go a step further
and suggest that Perry's mysterious “uncle” is in actuality his
doppelganger from the Irons Alliance universe, whose story and
how he came to possess the Ring and bequeath it to his “nephew”
remains as yet largely untold....
I have so far refrained from dwelling on the religious aspects of
this story. As with the more recent books in the series, I'm not
going to dwell on it here, having said enough in earlier reviews.
Suffice it to say that Eidemiller maintains the same overtly
evangelical Christian tone that has pervaded the books, and if the
reader accepted them hitherto there is no reason not to do so here.
As I've made clear, I come at my faith from a different perspective,
but that in no way interferes with my enjoyment of this series.
Sure, again I find one particular conversion recounted herein –
while in no way “impossible” for the ineffable Grace of God – a
bit unlikely, but I do also applaud Eidemiller's realism in admitting
that not every person is likely to come to such a happy ending. In
particular, I know it must have been a tremendous temptation not to
recount a salvation experience for “John Fleming” – bearing in
mind that the door in “014's” case is left open.
All in all, I enjoyed this story immensely as a fine denouement to
the Bronze Saga. Sure, I'll miss the characters, but I look
forward to Eidemiller's continuation of the Irons Alliance.
Cheers!, and Thanks for reading!
***
I see that for the “faked up” cover dress for this novel, artist
Dale Harris has shifted format to match that of Will Murray's newest
Doc Savage novels, The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage. Nice touch, although from the
particular illustration here I kept thinking that Doc would end up in
space....
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