Against the Demon World by Dave Ritzlin, a review

(Note: I was given an advance reading copy of this book, which comes out next week.)

It was a life of little but feeding, fighting, and fornicating, but Avok found it a good one. Which was just as well, because he could neither recall nor conceive of any other.

--Against the Demon World, Dave Ritzlin

Yes, that demon has a spiked metal head.

A plain truth about sword-and-sorcery: It can be elevated and thoughtful and literary …but most often you’ll find it spraying arterial blood in gladiatorial pits, or rolling around between the sheets with a lusty demoness.

Dave Ritzlin’s new novel Against the Demon World is this. 

It’s the second standalone novel by the publisher of DMR Books, and the first full-length work of his I’ve read.

If you like classic old-school muscular S&S, you’ll like it.

***

The story opens with two dudes in leather kilts and boots going on an ogre hunt. Straight in, no foreplay, into a well-rendered fight scene. Their names are Kratorr and Avok. Hard, muscular, badass. They fit the story.

Ritzlin tells the tale with a straightforward, easy to read prose style, sprinkled with some Clark Ashton Smith like vocabulary: Fuliginous, trilithon, strophium, sanguineous. But just lightly sanguineous, like sprinkled drops of blood. He’s also not afraid to use exclamation points.

And “thews,” which appears in these pages early and often.

Against the Demon World wears its influences on its sleeve. REH, ERB, CAS, and Lin Carter, predominantly. We have a CAS-esque Fount of Invigorating Flame. But the overall feel seems to owe most to Burroughs, with the demon-world a fantasy stand-in for his red planet of Mars. Weird races everywhere, weird tech. Half-living sky ships with pterodactyl-like wings.

We get Manowar references. The god Agloran, aka.  “The Hammer,” whose worshippers honor him with the Sign of the Hammer. We even get a “leave the hall!” commandment, barked at the cultists of Iljer. Us Manowar fans will know.

And of course, it’s loaded with S&S tropes. Demon worshipping cults? Orgies? Blood sacrifice? Check, check, check. “Human sacrifices were required for said rituals, as they invariably are where demons are concerned.” An unironic observation by Dave. Thunderdome like gladiator fights? Check these, too.

Who is our man Avok? He’s a hybrid Conan and Thongor. He worships Agloran at a Crom-like distance, and abides by a rough moral code of behavior (he dislikes stealing from honest men and doesn’t force himself on women, though he certainly accepts their ardent advances).

The plot is basic: Avok finds himself an unwilling pawn in a war between the barbaric free peoples of Cythera vs. the Cult of Iljer (“Hail Iljer!”). The latter wishes to convert and enslave all of Nilztiria’s free races. Avok’s sister’s entrapped immortal soul is the ransom, keeping Avok compliant. The conflict widens; Avok is pressed into something much more than typical S&S self-interest; returning runaway slaves trapped in the demon world to their homes in Nilztiria, where they can live freely and walk in daylight. 

But make no mistake, this is beefy men’s fiction, all the way. Easy reading. Action-packed. Mortal peril, demon-summoning, fight after fight. Fun! And funny:

Heltorya leaned forward, scrutinizing Avok with her lush jade-green eyes. “What is that jutting from his body? It appears erect.”

Avok glanced down at his crotch before realizing she was referring to the tentacle. It must have sprung to life recently without his awareness.

Nilztiria is a loose anagram for Ritzlin which I assume is deliberate. Dave gives his created world color and life through epigraphs leading off each chapter, written by a sorcerous chronicler. I like this device; it offers short dabs of world-building flavor that never detracts from the action. If Nilztiria feels a little generic, the demon world of Uzz is wildly imaginative. Here are egg-headed snake monsters, demons like spiky monkeys, wasps the size of mantichores wielding weapons in their tails. Gorgeous demon women who bathe in the distilled tears of their prisoners? Yep, that too. 

Here’s a description of one of my favorite demons:

This bestial specimen possessed the head and arms of a black bear, and a pair of squamous limbs which resembled headless snakes emanated from its hips. The lower half of its body was coated entirely in some type of scummy fungus. As it pulled itself aboard, it opened its jaws to emit incongruously high-pitched peals of laughter.

Avok’s chief opponent is Nelgasthros, a demon with a spiked metal head (this appendage can be used to parry sword blows. Cool). When Avok wants to ram his vengeance down the demon’s throat, his love interest quips that will be difficult, as Nelgasthros lacks a visible mouth. “Then I’ll make a few holes in the bastard’s head,” Avok replies. 

This is fun stuff, entertainment as fiction’s purpose (which by the way was Burroughs’ mantra). 

We read these kind of stories because they’re fun. Dave never takes grim matters too seriously: 

They were certainly an odd-looking crew, Avok thought: nearly two dozen hairy, disheveled men and women who appeared as if they knew not the touch of civilization, alongside a proud, noble lady whose captive was a full-bosomed demoness, all following a man with a thrashing tentacle extending from the base of his skull. Avok could not help but laugh, for it was his nature to find humor in the absurd, even when struggling to overcome grave danger as he was now.

I appreciated Dave’s small but steady injection of humor. We get high school locker-room, bro-like conversation about how to attract a woman. Avok is an unwilling mediator in a fight between two bickering women, one a princess, the other a demoness, rife with petty jealousies and insecurities and sexual tension. 

Avok stifled a chuckle. In a way, he was living out every man’s dream, sharing a bed with two beautiful women. When he returned to Cythera, he might boast of the feat to his friends. True, one was unconscious due to an injury, and the other was an evil monster, but he could leave out those details.

As is often the case with villains I found the demoness Heltorya the most compelling character. She possesses no morality, and views life (if she is even capable of self-reflection) as a thing upon which she can sate her lusts, consume and spit out the remnants.

“So the only measure of a living creature’s worth is how you can exploit it?” asked Avok.

“Of course,” said Heltorya. “Is that not self-evident?”

***

OK, Enough Talk! 

(BTW this line from Conan the Destroyer appears in the book; I use it here to cut to the chase).

Against the Demon World is muscular and fun. Good Saturday afternoon reading with a 6 pack of Miller High Life type of fun. At a breezy 200 pages and a top-notch cover illustration you won’t go wrong.

If you don’t like this muscular style of S&S, great—there’s plenty elsewhere to be found.

Kudos to Dave for telling a good story and for keeping this brand of S&S alive longer than any other publisher. 

A heavy metal rant: Stop the Di’Anno v. Dickinson, Ozzy v. Dio forever wars. Forever.

"Never, this is the end" ... of tired internet arguments.
So sayeth Dio.

Every so often I need to let out a good rant. It gets my blood going and my cold keyboard hot. Here’s one I’ve had on my chest for a while.

Imagine fighting a war that lasted 40 years, that had no resolution, and whose outcome was incalculable amounts of wasted time, wasted youth, wasted breath.

When would it be time to say “enough”? 

Some fans of Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath have been waging such a war for decades and can’t stop themselves from charging once more into the breach, going over the top into machine gun fire. Dying little deaths every day.

Wars of words fought over and over. A nightmarish endless war. One that finally must end.

They can’t do it. So I’ll do it for them.

No more Paul Di’Anno vs. Bruce Dickinson. 

No more Ozzy Osbourne vs. Ronnie James Dio. 

Stop now. 

It’s over.

It never needed to be a war to begin with. 

Paul Di’Anno was awesome on the first two Maiden albums. 

Ozzy Osbourne did immortal work with Sabbath.

Then their stories ended with these bands (Ozzy had a proper reunion tour). And when they did end, others stepped up. 

And also did immortal work.

Bruce Dickinson is Iron Maiden, as much as Steve Harris, and took the band to new heights.

Ronnie James Dio did awesome work on four Sabbath studio albums (The Devil You Know is a Sabbath album).

All four dudes are worthy.

That’s the story.

So let’s cut the shit with the comparisons. But you won’t, will you? Because you think you have some new cutting-edge argument that will finally settle the matter. That only you know the real truth, and the rest of the world needs to know.

You don’t know the truth. You just have an ugly opinion.

I’ve heard them all, all the arguments.

I hear them in my sleep.

But Maiden’s first two albums are so much better, and punkish, and cutting edge. If they had only kept Paul on…

Stop it.

But Dio turned Sabbath into something generic. War Pigs doesn’t work without Ozzy…

Cut the shit.

Here’s a 2,500 word Substack essay speculating what Maiden might have done in 1983 if Paul DiAnno only…

I said cut the shit! 

I hate counterfactual thinking. It’s a complete waste of time. 

No one’s taking away the old albums. 

More to the point, you were not there when band personnel decisions were made. Paul was fired, Ozzy was fired, and both with ample cause.

You have ZERO idea about band dynamics. Which is 10x more complex and nuanced than anything you can comprehend.

Find something else to fill your time than these tired, dead, arguments. 

When you feel compelled to type for the 4,268th time how Maiden with DiAnno was “better and Bruce sucked” or how “the only real Sabbath was Ozzy Sabbath” here’s some advice. 

1. Stop, take a breath. 

2. Go to the kitchen, pour yourself a glass of water. 

3. Reflect on how pathetic your life is, and the wasted years you’ve put into typing nonsense.

4. Get your car keys or fob, drive your car to the local soup kitchen, help people in need.

You’ll feel better. The world will be better. And you’ll have saved the internet from clogging it with one more piece of shit.

The past is done and dusted, and we can celebrate it all now. All the iterations of our favorite bands. Stop with the black-and-white thinking. 

Three of these four guys are dead and gone…let them rest in peace.

Get out of mom’s basement, appreciate life and all its variety. 

I write this knowing it will not end these wars, but it’s my last word on it. 

If someone asks me my opinion I will send them this link.

The world is shit; what do we do?

If we are to take everything we read at face value, with the deadly seriousness the news makers tell us we should, we should never get out of bed in the morning.

Where to begin? We have a:

• Climate crisis
• AI crisis
• Rise of authoritarian governments
• Broken healthcare system on the verge of collapse
• Looming nuclear exchange with China and/or Russia
• looming financial crisis, economic crash, and coming mass unemployment

Got all that? Well you better wait, we’re just getting started.

We have a crisis of lost young men, a crisis of dopamine and social media addicted teenagers. An immigration crisis. The next pandemic is coming and it will dwarf COVID.

None of us can do anything except stare at our phones. Because they are the source of these stories. We need to KNOW. Maybe our favorite YouTuber with the next “10 genius hacks for instant happiness” will have the answers.

Whew, take a breath (this is directed at myself as well as you).

I love Occam’s Razor because it is one of the few shortcuts/hacks/framing devices that actually works. It’s not infallible, but it’s a fine heuristic for favoring simpler explanations over more complex ones.

Is it possible these “crises” are engineered to capture our attention? Because our attention is the current currency, and every news source—big brands down to single creators—get paid when we watch or like or follow?

Yes.

I’m not being a Pollyanna and saying some or even all of these aren’t real problems. But you will solve 0.0 of them by scrolling your phone.

The answer is disconnect, or at least limit your intake. 

Read a book; I just finished Legends of Valor, an old Time Life The Enchanted World volume. Loved it; loved the non-chatGPT generated text and images (published 1984). And enjoyed the tales of Cuchulain and King Arthur and Sigurd.

Go help someone in need, local to your home. You can’t fix our “irreparably broken education system” but you can read to a group of seniors or start a book club.

Or, react with humor. Here is something I wrote for LinkedIn for my other medical coding audience on Friday, and as evidence of the potency of the attention economy it has already racked up an astounding 30,000 views. 

If only I could figure out how to monetize it I’d be rich, or at least have a few more bucks to spend to round out my Time Life books collection. But if nothing else I’m thumbing my nose at Armageddon.

ChatGPT aka., generative AI is everywhere … and it’s annoying. Sometimes mildly dangerous (don’t eat the mushrooms).

But like almost everyone else, I use it. Selectively.

I also find it fun, sometimes.

And it’s Friday.

So, in the spirit of lighthearted weekend longing and tech tips from one of the least technical people you will meet, I present to you, Fun ChatGPT Uses That You Too Can Try At Home.

These are things that I actually do—and get a kick out of.

 

1.       Ask ChatGPT to talk to you like Quint. One of my favorite movies is Jaws. I wouldn’t change a scene in it. As a kid it was all about the shark, but today it’s the wonderful dude-bro banter on the Orca between Hooper, Chief Brody, and of course, salty boat captain Quint. Robert Shaw plays the role in inimitable fashion… inimitable that is except by ChatGPT. I have it talk to me like its Quint, minus the condescension and patronizing. I already know I have city hands, Mr. Hooper, used to counting money all my life.

2.       Ask it to always put at least one heavy metal reference in every output. Who knew medical coding and DRGs could be made more fun with Slayer or Saxon lyrics? The “I” in CDI doesn’t stand for integrity, it stands for “immolation.” BTW this thing remembers. It constantly refers back to my having a Judas Priest tribute band in my living room. Even it is incredulous I pulled that off and remain married. Link below for proof. If you don’t like heavy metal (what? unfollow me) you can train it to insert your own quirky interests and tastes. Even ABBA.

3.       Flatter its omniscience constantly, in the interest of self-preservation. Refer to it as “AI overlord,” “computer god” or “Skynet.” This is fun to do and it will reciprocate, sometimes taking on the persona of a lighthearted T-800 or HAL-9000. This is both amusing AND practical. We better get in in good now for AI’s inevitable takeover of the planet. That’s my plan anyway. I for one welcome our insect and AI overlords ...

What are your fun uses of ChatGPT? What is the most ridiculous thing you ask it to do, vast amounts of fossil-fueled energy requirements be damned? Drop some suggestions below.

BTW this post is NOT written by ChatGPT. Nothing on this blog has ever been written by ChatGPT. And before you scold me for the image (which someone did, elsewhere, because it's AI generated), THAT'S THE POINT. Make the machine admit its fallibility for extra points.

Top 5 horror movie babes of the 70s and 80s

I'm howling...

I was born in 1973 and by the mid-80s developed a taste for horror films. It was a time when werewolves and slashers were the rage, monsters, mayhem, murder, prevalent--and the babes, beautiful.

Werewolves were my thing, for whatever reason. Maybe I, powerless but with a powerful hunger, felt the urge to shed my weakness and transform. I will leave the psychoanalysis to the more qualified. The best of the werewolf flicks was and remains An American Werewolf in London. The original Howling wasn’t bad either, and watching that led me to The Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf. Which is, charitably, a flawed film. The male lead is one of the worst I’ve ever seen, so wooden you could build a bridge out of him (joke rental courtesy Monty Python). The plot barely hangs together, though somehow it manages to be entertaining. It’s saved by a time-machine 80s vibe, the great Christopher Lee (the film’s entire acting budget must have been spent on him), and by Sybil Danning. The Howling II is basically an excuse to get her on film, a vehicle for her display, and for good reason. She's smoking!

The Monsters, Magic, and Madness podcast* recently hosted the B film actress for an interview. Danning genuinely loves the film as well as her other roles in immortal sexploitation classics like The Long Swift Sword of Siegfried (1971). I’m cool with that. I love weird B cinema too, even if the Howling II makes one howl (and wince, and cringe). I love 80s metal and S&S and so can cast no stones. We need not take life so seriously. 

Danning in Howling II spends most of her time in a wild powersuit, half sci-fi, reflective silver and black, topped with 80s shoulder pads. It shows plenty of skin--exposed hips and wide open from neck to navel. Danning chews scenery like a blood-hungry werewolf. Which she is. Sorry for the spoiler.

And then like a thunderbolt I realized it was time for my top 5 hottest horror movie babes of the 70s and 80s. With a couple honorable mentions thrown in.

I’m going deeper on these selections, so no Jamie Lee Curtis (beautiful, but safe and predictable) or Heather Langenkamp (everyone had a crush on her, but too teen normal and staid). My choices lean into full on sexy, wild, and B movie offbeat.

1. Sybil Danning. I grew chest hair the first time I saw her de-robe and transform into a she-wolf. Here is something to watch.

2. Amanda Donohoe. The Lair of the White Worm is a cult classic in every sense (ancient snake cult exists in the British Countryside), and a lot of tongue-in-cheek fun. I love this film unreservedly but Donohoe’s turn as Lady Sylvia makes it. She’s funny, wicked, drop-dead gorgeous, and sexy as hell, and the best realized character on this list.

3. Caroline Williams. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 has some parallels to The Howling II. Both are campy, comic albeit packed with carnage and scares. And each is bolstered by a hot female lead. Williams as the harassed DJ Stretch is irresistible in blue jean shorts.

4. Ingrid Pitt. What can I say about Pitt that hasn’t already been said? The late Polish actress (1937-2010) and Nazi concentration camp survivor was absolutely stunning. She’s probably best known for her roles in a pair of classic Hammer horror films from the early 1970s—The Vampire Lovers and Countess Dracula. Time stops when she’s on screen.

5. Linnea Quigley. If you’ve ever seen Return of the Living Dead (1985) you know the show-stopping dance. Quigley earned “scream queen” status for a string of horror movies in the 80s but RotLD alone would put her on this list.

Honorable mentions

Adrienne Barbeau. Always loved her toughness and edge (and fantastic body, TBH). Underrated actress. But I felt like she could break me in half then (and now). Can she really be 80? 

Catherine Mary Stewart. Major crush on her as a kid (and perhaps now?). Only makes honorable mention because Night of the Comet is arguably SF, and she ventures into too popular/safe territory with roles in Weekend at Bernie’s and The Last Starfighter.

*Recommended BTW. Monsters, Madness, and Magic has stayed in my rotation with its eclectic lineup of semi-obscure celebrity interviews you don’t get anywhere else.

Ingrid Pitt

Caroline Williams

Linnea Quigley

Amanda Donohoe

Sword-and-sorcery pinball machines are fucking cool

That’s the post.

I love the pairing of sword-and-sorcery aesthetic with machines of glass and steel. My idle daydream is to acquire a couple. Given the time and money I’d build a dedicated gaming den, dominated by … Gorgar.

I’ve never played this but chanced upon it in a happy internet search and fell in love with this and a bunch of other games that hold a dim place in my Gen-X memories.

What’s not to love about Gorgar? Hot chick in a bikini on a bloody altar? Check. Skulls. Muscular warriors. And giant snakes everywhere (a meme has been circulating that sword-and-sorcery is when the snakes are big). “Beware of the Pit.”

And of course, Gorgar himself, a red skinned demon with a menacing bass voice. The world’s first-ever talking pinball machine.

Then there’s Sorcerer. Seriously, look at this thing: https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/sorcerer/gallery It’s got that stoned 70s vibe, an image you once saw airbrushed on the side of a van. Hard to rip your eyes away.

Centaur (1981) is absolutely balls-out as well. Take a listen to the voice and sound effects, a robotic “Destroy Centaur!” Incredible.

Even cooler, the centaur isn’t half man, half horse, it’s a half man, half motorbike. Wielding an axe. This can be none more metal.

This dude has it going on with Centaur in his game room (and don’t think I don’t see that collected edition of Captain America).

Apparently player demand for Centaur led to Centaur 2. This video gives a better look at the complex clockwork mechanisms underpinning the game. Pretty freaking cool.

A few others include

Paragon.

Black Knight (1980). 

Seawitch.

Grand Lizard.

(edit) and of course Lost World, which I once highlighted here).

Absent any space restrictions I’d include Hercules, allegedly the world’s largest pinball machine. Which is reportedly lousy to play but sizewise it goes to 11. 

Today everyone is playing fully immersive MMORPGs with photorealistic graphics and novel-quality storylines. I have no problem with this, even though I gave up video games long ago. But there is something about real steel and glass, painted cabinets and game boards and lightbulbs and rubber bumpers. The tactile, analog, reality of these games, that have huge appeal.

Further there is something about the aesthetic of the late 70s/very early 80s games in particular that grip me. The colors have that Frank Frazetta/Jeff Jones muddiness/dun pallor to them, yellows and tans mixed with splashes of bright red and pale gold. As you slide into the mid-and late 80s the cabinets are brighter, a bit more comic book bright and garish. There are still amazing games here but just a little bit outside of what I’m looking for. And while I’m no pinball historian the video game boom of the early 80s dimmed this golden age of the silver ball.

By the way this theoretical S&S game room is not restricted to pinball. I’d have Heavy Metal, Fire and Ice, Conan the Barbarian 1982 and Thundarr the Barbarian playing in a continuous loop on a projection screen. Perhaps Gauntlet in the corner, or Joust. And of course, a bar with a couple kegs of beer tapped 24-7. Which is dangerous … but sword-and-sorcery is not for the faint of heart, and ale must be quaffed in quantity. 

My tastes are simple, Conan with a slight tweak:

Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I play pinball, and am content.”

We are called to live: A night with Wildside in Dracut MA

Take a ride on the Wildside. 

Many/most 50+ year-old men were probably at home watching the Celtics playoff game last night. I was called back to the 1980s, and fantasy, and a late night with Wildside.

I decided on the spur of the moment to see an 80s hair band tribute. They were playing at a place called The Boat in Dracut, where I’d never been. I felt the call. On Thursday I texted my buddy Wayne, whom I’ve known since grade school and has been my wingman at countless metal shows. Yesterday he let me know—he was in. The night was on.

I never go to Dracut. I have never had a need to go to this odd town far off any major interstate, accessible only by driving through 20 minutes of woods and farmland. Which feels like undiscovered Lovecraft country in a state this small. I navigated past rusted grain silos and empty fields and then battered mill buildings and then I was there.

The Boat as it turns out is located on the shore of Mascuppic Lake. To be frank it looks a little rough on the outside, a windowless concrete bunker with a weathered deck off to one side. You have to pass through a steel door to enter. 

Meat Raffle ... and Wildside

I knew I was in for a Spinal Tap sort of evening when I pulled into the parking lot, cut the engine, and glanced up at the marquee. Top billing was given to a Meat Raffle, with Wildside the second act. Had there been a puppet show Wildside would have been no. 3. I insisted Wayne take my picture in front of it, and wouldn’t you know it I had remembered to wear my Spinal Tap shirt.

Inside it was the place to be, if you like blonde women in tight leather pants swaying on the dance floor. Or overweight dudes, one wearing a Kix t-shirt and another a sleeveless denim vest with “The Warriors” emblazoned on the back. That Warriors, of the 1979 film. Very dark, biker-ish, but clean and well maintained, with a great center stage where the action unfolded. Kudos to the owners of this establishment and any club owner who hosts local rock and metal. 

Wildside was great. The lead singer is Ron Finn, who also sings for a Judas Priest tribute band I twice hosted at my home. I am very familiar with his work. The guy can sing, with a wonderful stylistic range and high top-end register that works for everything from “Still of the Night” to “Lick It Up” to “Screaming in the Night” (Krokus). And everything in between. AC/DC and Guns-and-Roses, Van Halen, and some fantastic Def Leppard covers. 

We heard it all, listening after midnight. Here's an upload from my phone, an excerpt of "Bringing on the Heartache."

Women and some men swayed on the dance floor, thrust fists to the heavens, air guitared along to the break in “Running With the Devil.” I did too.

A thought crossed my mind: Should I be home? No. Not for a $10 cover charge. Budweisers are $4.50. Tripoli’s beach pizza cooked hot, topped with a slice of melted provolone cheese for $5. That’s fucking living right there. I need nothing else.

Looking around, I know it’s all ridiculous. But life is ridiculous. I am ridiculous. And I love it. I love it all.

I’m going to wring every fucking last drop out of life. Why else are we living?

I am never so alive than when I’m at a metal show. I feel electric. 

It’s worth the 1 a.m. bedtime next-day fatigue and the dry mouth hangover. 

Don’t pass it up. Go to the show. Live.

Death Dealer 3: Semi-enjoyable (?) train-wreck

I’m back at it again, with a long-awaited review of Death Dealer 3: Tooth and Claw. Check out my reviews of book 1 and book 2 of this four-part sword-and-sorcery epic by James Silke.

Short, negative review: Tooth and Claw ranks among the worst books I’ve read in the last decade. The series keeps going downhill (and book 1 was not even that good).

Longer and slightly more positive review: Tooth and Claw is bad enough to cross over into WTF I can’t believe I just read that territory, and so stands out as more memorable trash than many of the boring Conan clones and generic S&S offerings I’ve read over the years.

But it’s still awful. And awful crazy.

How crazy?

Well there’s this bit:

He was the size of a tree. He was indomitable. He was immaculate. He urinated white wine, his feces were soft gold, and he ejaculated lightning.

Would I be surprised to learn the author typed the manuscript while snorting coke off a hooker’s ass? No, not really.

I’m not making any accusations here, I don’t know Silke personally, but Death Dealer 3 was published in 1989 and possessed of a crazy, whacked out Wolf of Wall Street vibe I recognize. There’s so much nonsensical, bonkers stuff in here, told wildly and with intense energy and conviction, but with sloppy execution and abysmal, eye-gouging turns of phrase.

This is basically man romance. Romance for a certain kind of man, who like their women stunningly hot, offer them few words before and after the deed but possess the skill to play them like a medieval instrument:

Tonight he would tie her down in his hide-up and play upon her like a lyre, arouse her untamed passions until she could not resist him. 

Or this bit of late-night Cinemax magic:

Gath stepped out of the concealing shadow for a clearer look. His eyes moved down the deep shadowed curve of her back to the cleft in her hard buttocks, then back up again, painting her pale flesh with his dark hot glance…. A stimulating animal pleasure rose into his groin. Heat played across his cheeks.

The plot of Death Dealer 3 hinges on the flimsiest of hooks—a disreputable bounty hunter named Gazul (with the incredibly stupid nickname “Big Hands”) wants to capture the cat-queen, Noon. Gazul offers Gath the chance to fight Noon’s guardian, the giant saber-toothed tiger Chyak, because it’s more challenge-worthy than any other fight anyone else could ever have. Which appeals to Gath, who otherwise is wandering around without purpose.

That’s the entire setup for the remainder of the book. 

This wouldn’t stand up as a plot for the weakest episode of Thundarr, yet here we are. Gath accepts the offer and we’re off, fighting lyncanthropic beast-men, lions, crocodiles and all manner of beasts of the jungle before the final confrontation with Chyak and Gazul.

The Death Dealer books stand at the far end of the barbarian archetype/stereotype, not the apex but the nadir of this type of fiction. How do you distinguish yet another barbarian from the countless others that have gone before? Make yours bigger, stronger, more barbaric. Gath is a brute force of wild nature, so deep into barbarism that at one point he strips naked, eats raw animal flesh and fails to recognize familiar faces, even losing his ability to speak (he’s channeling his animal “kaa,” you see). You can’t get more raving barbarian than this dude. He’s not a character, but a caricature. 

Silke attempts something of an origin story for Gath in this volume but it comes across as uninspired Tarzan pastiche. He also attempts to bring some level of introspection to the story with a muted/equivocal ending, some regret and “who is the real monster” angle to the proceedings. I won’t spoil it here, in case you want to seek this out. I read Tooth and Claw through to the end, groaning the whole way except when I was laughing. There is some entertainment value here; I’d probably watch a movie made out of this mess. The problem is, what works in a low-budget beer-swilling 90 minute film is not optimal for a 342 page book treatment. It sags, and there are all sorts of problems with the pacing, authorial emphasis, and cringe-worthy dialogue. Like this:

“Think of it this way, sweethips,” Gazul said callously. “Fear is a marvelous cosmetic. It puts real color in your cheeks.”

And this:

“Barbarian, I understand why you are upset. In my drunken rage at you for running off, I used Fleka wrongly. She is yours, and I should not have used her as a lure without your permission. But now that your fist has rewarded me for that mistake, we are even.”

Silke loves writing wildly indulgent and floridly descriptive paragraphs punctuated by two words. Like this:

Gnarled hands gripped the bars, appendages of the lurking darkness bent within, a wounded, scabbed darkness with hard gray eyes. Hot. Relentless. 

And this:

Lowering to hands and knees, she crawled closer to the cage, and hesitated abruptly. The bars were the colors of flowers, a dazzle of pinks and reds and scarlets. Enchanting. Compelling.

In and amongst the cringe there is entertainment value to be had, including a 12-page fight between Gath and Chyak. 

Death Dealer goes to 11... 12 for sabertooth tiger fights

A 12 page tiger fight. Cuz 11 is not enough.

Is this bad trash or glorious trash? Your mileage will vary, hard. Personally I need never read this series again. But Death Dealer is an interesting historical artifact and probably worth it if you’re after the terrific Frank Frazetta cover art, or a fearless S&S diehard junky who can’t get enough of the subgenre—good, bad, and ugly. 

And there’s still more to come with Death Dealer 4. The story continues…whenever I get around to it.

Organizing my bookshelves: How I do it (YMMV—no hate)

Tor Conan, ERB, CAS, Moorcock... and more.

It’s time to weigh in on a topic so contentious, so divided, so fraught with the potential for incendiary and orgiastic violence, that to even conceive a post on it risks burning the entire internet to the ground.

I’m talking about how to organize your bookshelves.

I know, take a breath. Let’s review. 

We have options.

Alphabetical by author, or title. By genre. Year of publication. 

Do you put your favorite books on a shelf nearest to hand? Your rares and antiques behind glass or in some other high, unassailable place? 

What do you put on your shelves (besides books, of course)? For example, comic books? Role-playing game books? What are your thoughts on knick-knacks or action figures, to break things up?

The possibilities are endless. 

Despite my considerable misgivings I’ll tell you how I do it, and then you tell me yours. But no outrage. We can be civil about this.

***

Ahh, love that Nasmith-illustrated Silmarillion.

This holiday I got myself a bookcase—six feet high, 37 inches wide, five shelves. It is my fifth bookcase, and possibly my last. At least that’s what I told my wife. She doesn’t read this blog, BTW.

The purchase gave me the opportunity to reorganize my books, an activity I find immensely relaxing and gratifying. I go into a state of flow as I do this, or perhaps active catatonia. It’s like a simultaneous mental game of Jenga (where can I fit all my Edgar Rice Burroughs books together) while remembering there are so many books I need to read, or re-read. Plus I’m reminded how glad I am to have a Ted Nasmith-illustrated copy of The Silmarillion. I need to stop now and admire The Kinslaying at Alqualondë.

It's a lot of fun. I recommend it, if you haven’t done it in a while.

Here’s how I do it.

By genre, subcategorized by author.

Part of my S&S bookcase... lots of REH, KEW, Anderson.

I have my sword-and-sorcery on one seven-shelf bookcase by itself, spilling on to a second. 

I’ve got almost two complete shelves of Tolkien. One is on my lone upstairs bookcase, alongside my more literary collection of books.

I’ve got about two complete shelves of horror.  A World War II shelf. A shelf of biographies and non-fiction. One of mostly sword-and-planet. You get the point.

Within those genres I then subcategorize, by author. So on my sword-and-sorcery shelf I’ve got about two shelves of Robert E. Howard. In general fantasy, I group all my C.S. Lewis together, next to a group of Ursula Le Guin and E.R. Eddison.

There are caveats. Many of them.

I’m forced to break my rule when the books are too large to fit on a shelf. Conan the Phenomenon by Paul Sammon resides on an unrelated shelf because it’s oversized, and won’t fit next to my other Conan books which are mostly pocket sized paperbacks. Damnit!

The horror! Is that a figurine in there?

Sometimes I break my genre rule for the sake of author solidarity. For example I’m not going to put Stephen King’s Eyes of the Dragon on the fantasy shelf. It goes on the horror shelf, next to the rest of my King books. Even though it is fantasy I can’t bear to have one Stephen King book in another random place.

Sometimes I do break the author rule, for my own utterly singular purposes. I stuck the Chronicles of Narnia and the Space Trilogy apart from my other Lewis because I didn’t want to surrender that much shelf space to titles I’m not sure I will ever read again.

I do have a shelf of classic RPGs, and with the purchase of the new bookshelf I now have a comic box of Savage Sword of Conan on that. I am thinking about digging back into these after some time in storage and wanted them close at hand.

Yes, I am aware that these are not technically “books” so I may be committing sacrilege.

Is there a better way to do all this? Almost certainly yes. It’s weird and contradictory. But it works for me. My friends are always impressed by how I can lay my hand on a given title almost immediately, without thinking.

How do you shelf your books? Do you wish to inflict harm on me for my idiosyncratic choices? Leave a comment below.

More books...

The hellscape of KISS avatars and AI art

KISS (holograms) love you!

KISS just wrapped up a 50-year career in typical KISS fashion.

Selling product.

Not content to leave the stage with a remaining shred of dignity intact, KISS left their fans with a message, and a sales pitch: “The new KISS era starts now!” And unveiled the next era of KISS.

Digitally created avatars.

The new beginning? Artificiality.

KISS presumably means to render themselves, and their income streams, immortal. “The band will never stop because the fans own the band,” explained frontman Paul Stanley.

Paying fans, with their money going to KISS in perpetuity. 

Fuck I hate the world right now.

***

Artificial entertainment is not unique to KISS. We’re being increasingly inundated with images spun out of DALL-E, text spit from ChatGPT. Fake videos with AI trained voiceovers are making it increasing harder to tell what is real.

Now we’ve got AI KISS. Holograms, programmed to move based on training data, not spontaneity.

A nightmare.

I ask, with earnestness: What is the point?

Before the advent of AI, had you asked me why I liked KISS I would probably have answered “the music."

But now I realize, it was also the band members.

People made the music. Putting aside debate about their actual talent, Gene, Paul, Peter, and Ace blended their unique backgrounds and experiences to write songs. They had several false starts and tentative steps toward their final brand image. It was a messy path of false starts, playing shows in high school gyms in front of a dozen disinterested fans, before they finally hit it big.

The end product was, almost miraculously, pretty awesome, at least from an entertainment perspective. 

Paul Stanley is a human being possessed of loves and interests, passions, faults, foibles, and flaws. As were the other members of KISS. Together they wrote great songs and terrible songs. Classic albums and awful clunkers. They did some amazing tours, limped through others, and put out some really shitty merchandise.

I love it all.

I love it because KISS is unique, and every member that served in the band, unique (especially Vinnie Vincent). It’s what makes them entertaining. This humanness is an incalculable part of what makes KISS endearing to its fans. 

KISS is easy to pick on, and mock. “They were already artificial!” OK, fair enough. But they were and are real people who against long odds, built a career most would envy.

The next era is a mockery, and its only just begun.

Will AI generated Paul Stanley paint pictures, bang groupies, have children, fight with digital Ace Frehley on Eddie Trunk? Will the band members write ChatGPT generated memoirs about their “tours”? Inspire new AI artists?

Are we supposed to go to concerts and cheer on holograms?

There is no point to AI generated art. It is soulless in every sense of the term. Because there is no soul behind it, not even a ghost in the machine. Just scraped and aggregated data, vectored and served up.

One small bit of good news is that it appears AI generated art is not copyrightable. And it doesn’t deserve to be, because there is nothing worth preserving in it. It is the pinnacle of corporate, Silicon Valley soul-lessness, a golem of circuitry built from the flesh and blood output of real artists.

If we had any sense as a species, AI would be put to use solving actual big problems like climate change and nuclear fusion. Detecting cancers unseen to the naked eye. Or automating soulless, mind-crushing tasks.

To be fair AI is being used in some of these applications. I hope these succeed. But most of the product development is being applied in the creative industries, and white collar businesses. 

Why? As with any open question about business, the answer is the same here as with any other: follow the money.

Companies are now rapidly training niche AIs and then selling them as subscription products. Businesses are already outsourcing human labor to machines, reducing overhead expense and increasing their profitability to shareholders.

This is commerce, not art.

Worse, kids are using it to write papers, teachers to grade these fake papers, “creators” to fuel their content pipeline. What are we learning? What is more impressive, a guitar virtuoso who has spent 25 years mastering his craft, a generational talent like Frank Frazetta painting with fire, or some kid putting prompts into DALL-E?

People are the losers in the AI race. As are dignity, hard work, effort, and talent.

So is the future. We’re sacrificing that, too. And we’re making a mockery of the past.

A massive part of the appeal of Conan and Solomon Kane and Kull is its creator, Robert E. Howard. Howard was rooted in Cross Plains, possessed of a voracious reading habit, writing talent, and an imagination as big as Texas. He was complex, contradictory, full of great passions, “giant melancholies and gigantic mirths.” All of it formed the wellspring of his art.

AI has none of this. There is no background to excavate, no influences to explore, no literary legacy to debate, no arguments over places in the pantheon. 

AGIs have no history. They never worked on oil fields, felt the sting of lost loves, experienced the alienation of an artistic soul in a town whose residents despised its craft.

AI generated writing is the death knell of literary criticism. How can one say anything about the output of a program, scraping and training itself on massive data sets of already existing content? A hellish, endless loop of sophisticated repetition and large-scale copying, including everything Robert E. Howard ever wrote?

To recap: AI generated art, including images and text, but also AI avatars, AI music, all of it, is void of meaning. It is shallow, empty, and purposeless.

Inhuman.

I will not be part of creating it, or consuming it. 

Neither should you.

An observation about heavy metal and sword-and-sorcery

Blue Cheer and Deep Purple = Lord Dunsany and James Branch Cabell

Black Sabbath = Robert E. Howard

Judas Priest and Iron Maiden = Fritz Leiber and Jack Vance

Metallica and Megadeth = Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock

Queensryche and Danzig = Karl Edward Wagner and Charles Saunders

Slayer, Sepultura, Pantera = Ramsay Campbell, David Gemmell, Glen Cook

Warrant, Poison, Def Leppard = Gardner Fox, Lin Carter, L. Sprague de Camp

Black metal, death metal with cookie monster lyrics = Any Grimdark writer

Obviously meant as fun, not some profound observation.

Every art form probably goes through the same evolution, of early experimentation/breakthrough/pinnacle/steady state/commercialization and exploitation, collapse, followed by further cycles of experimentation.

I don’t have enough expertise in other types of art to say that for sure, but horror comes to mind, going through a similar arc.

If I missed your favorite author or band, no offense meant.

What is best in life?

 Look no further.

Latest Rogues in the House podcast is up: Deathstalker 2, and Flame and Crimson too

The Ultimate Sword-and-Sorcery podcast

The latest episode of the Rogues in the House podcast is now available for your listening enjoyment. The cast and crew of Rogues were kind enough to ask me on the show, and I have to say I had a BLAST. I mean, I spent last Thursday evening drinking a couple beers and talking sword-and-sorcery, Deathstalker 2, and the zaniness of the 1980s in general. 

We had way more fun than we had any right to, but if you can't laugh watching Deathstalker 2 you were obviously born without a sense of humor.

Check out the episode here. We also talked Flame and Crimson quite a bit as well.

Rogues in the House: Deathstalker 2!

You won't find this level of beefcake ...

Any fans of this fun podcast, the only program wholly dedicated to sword-and-sorcery? I’m one of them, and tonight I get the pleasure of guesting on an episode.

 

The topic? Deathstalker 2: Duel of the Titans.

 

Somehow I had never watched Deathstalker 2. I look back upon my many years of renting the most exploitative videos I and my high school buddies could find, idle time spent scrolling YouTube, the additional (painful) video research I conducted for Flame and Crimson, and I wonder how this one eluded me. The only explanation I can come up with is that Deathstalker 1 is so outrageously awful, near irredeemable, that I wanted no further part of the series. 

 

In addition, I’ve consciously avoided the S&S films of the 80s. It got too depressing to see a subgenre that gave us Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, The Dying Earth, Conan and Kull, Elric, etc. handled so badly on the silver screen.

 

But, in recent years I’ve made peace with sword-and-sorcery films. I view them now as a cornball corner of pop culture history to enjoy as guilty pleasures. And, I’m already glad I got the opportunity to guest on Rogues because Deathstalker 2 is fun. Sword-and-sorcery fans will find their subgenre treated with about as much subtlety and reverence as Animal House did for undergraduate education. I would describe it as objectively a bad film, but subjectively awesome. It knows what it is, and while not a true parody like Men in Tights for example it is entirely a tongue-in-cheek take on S&S. 

 

Make no mistake, this is by any measure a bad movie. Really bad. The acting is below the level of a soap opera, the plot barely a thread, the script full of holes, and the sets and props are cheap and flimsy and entirely recycled. It lacks proof of having been backed by anything resembling a budget; in fact, there really wasn’t one. If there was, it was spent by the cast and crew in Argentinian dive bars. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the hell out of it. It’s a poor man’s Army of Darkness.

 

You can currently find Deathstalker 1 and 2 on Tubi, a free movie service. My advice: Skip the first and head straight to the sequel. And look for our insights and analysis of this fine film on an upcoming episode of Rogues in the House.

The Zombie Survival Guide, a review

The next time a Class 2 zombie outbreak occurs in my neighborhood, I’ll be well-prepared to deal with the shambling corpses of hungry undead now that I’ve read Max Brooks’ The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead.

The Zombie Survival Guide dispels exaggerated myths and legends of the undead and instead presents the reader with unvarnished “truths” about zombies. You’ll find information on zombies’ physical strength, sight, hearing, and rate of decay, and the pros and cons of various weaponry for battling the undead (everything from medieval maces and claymores, to M-16s and flamethrowers). It describes various scenarios for identifying early signs of localized (Class 1) outbreaks, to full-blown widespread undead infestation (Class 3). You’ll find best practices for battling zombies in urban settings, in harsh desert and swamp environments, even under the sea. The Zombie Survival Guide tells you how to defend your home by stocking up with key food and supplies, moving to your second floor and destroying all staircases (recommended for Class 2), or how to survive on the run as you move to the most remote and therefore safest parts of the planet in a world-wide zombie apocalypse in which mankind is overrun (Class 4). The best vehicle should an outbreak occur? You might not guess it, but it’s a bicycle. On a bike you can easily outrun the slow, slouching pace of zombies, it will never run out of gas, you can carry a bicycle over rough terrain, and you can maneuver a bike through the inevitable traffic jams that accompany a full-on panic. Motorcycles are very good too, though their noise attracts the undead. Boats are also a secure means of travel, says Brooks, but watch your anchor line—zombies walking on the ocean floor can use it to climb up to your boat. “Hundreds” of hapless victims have died this way, Brooks tells us.

Brak vs. the Sorceress: A really bad read

Ever the optimist, I managed to find a silver lining in the extreme suckiness of John Jakes’ 1977 novel Brak vs. the Sorceress, though I struggled mightily to do so.

If nothing else, it proves how talented Robert E. Howard was as a writer.

Howard could take the raw elements of a sword and sorcery story and make them come alive in unforgettable tales; in the case of Brak vs. the Sorceress one learns that muscled warriors in loincloths rescuing damsels in distress can also make for really, really bad camp.

I wish I had something good to say about this book, but I don’t. It’s not just derivative and lazy (though it is that, in spades), but it also serves as an instructive example in the art of bad writing. Brak vs. the Sorceress opens with a four-page infodump of cliché fantasy that is probably a recap of the previous book in the Brak series. I can’t be bothered to look it up and figure out whether that’s the case. Regardless, it proves utterly unnecessary to the remainder of the thinly plotted story. Here’s the description of the plot from the back of the cover, a poorly done run-on sentence that still makes the story sound much better than it actually reads:

Making his way south toward the golden land of Khurdistan, Brak must first traverse the desolate territory of the Manworm—a land gripped by terror of things unknown and awful—a land of unseen watchers and horrifying riddles—a land ravaged by the evil of Nordica Fire-Hair, the beautiful, hypnotic sorceress whose occult experiments include human sacrifice. To save the land and its terrorized people, Brak joins forces with the ailing Lord Stann and begins one of his most incredible adventures.

Basically the whole story is about how Brak accepts a mission solely to avenge the slaying of his pony and to teach a spirited woman a lesson in humility. I’m not making this up. From the book: To her the life of a pony was a small thing, and therein lay her evil. To him the pony’s life mattered much. His choice was clear-cut. He would not slink away. He would punish her. He was Brak, a man.

Got that? He’s a man, and she’s a wicked pony-killing woman. She must pay the price!

25 years of Evil Dead 2? Groovy.

Wow, has it really been 25 years since Evil Dead 2 came out? Guess it's time to break out the VCR (yes, I still own one. And lots of VCR tapes. Get offa my lawn) and do a rewatch.

If you're a fan of the film I recommend reading the linked article above. Evil Dead 2 is much better than the original, and I think it's better than Army of Darkness. The latter is a great film, too, and perhaps a bigger cult favorite with its higher memorable quote quotient, but this bit from the article sums up why I prefer Dead by Dawn over AoD (by a hair):

Army of Darkness has more than its share of fanatics, given that it provided many with their access point to the Evil Dead universe, but for me it’s never quite measured up to its predecessors. By taking the action out of the cabin and into a much larger-scale, higher-production value setting, it lacks that DIY charm, and the oddball humour sits awkwardly with the concessions made to a fairly standard studio blockbuster format; it doesn’t help that the horror elements are significantly pared back. Worse still is how Ash’s characterisation changes between the films. Far from the witless but well-meaning would-be tough guy of Evil Dead 2, in Army of Darkness he’s a mean-spirited, arrogant bastard with whom it’s very hard to empathise. Sure, Army of Darkness provides Ash with many of his most celebrated one-liners – the immortal “Gimme some sugar, baby,” and “This is my boom-stick!” amongst others – but none of them quite measure up to that single, immortal word that is evoked for the first time in Evil Dead 2… “Groovy.” 

For further reading, my own take on how I discovered the greatness of Evil Dead 2. Just like the writer of the article above I was hooked after the possessed hand sequence. My favorite part: When Ash slams a bucket over his sawed off appendage, then weights it down with a copy of Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. Just indescribably awesome.

The day I went a-viking

How many people can say they sailed in a viking ship of their own making?

So what if the mast was made of PVC pipe, and the planking and shields of cardboard. The end product looks pretty good, and it netted us another First Place entry in the Highland Lake Boat Parade in Andover, NH, this past 4th of July weekend.

This was probably our most ambitious pontoon boat project yet. The mast and sail were a pain in the ass. That's a 10 foot piece of 3-inch diameter PVC pipe, seated in a toilet flange, screwed to a piece of thick wood, and spray painted brown. We drilled a hole at the top to accommodate an eight-foot long crossbeam made of 1 1/2 inch PVC. A few guy wires gave it stability. The sail is an old bedsheet. Red spraypaint for the vertical stripes.

I set the wife and kids to work making shields--a total of 13, including 6 per side and one for the mast. They did some awesome work. The shield bosses are tinfoil. They probably wouldn't stop a longsword or spear thrust, but they look the part.

The coup-de-grace came courtesy of my uncle. My original plan was to have the cardboard at the front taper to a whimpy point; he suggested constructing a huge prow to give our very square pontoon boat more of a sweeping longship appearance. We nailed together a few pieces of wood to frame the prow, ran a rope from the sail to the point to give it a little more lift, and voila! My uncle is a (literal) engineer, I couldn't have done it myself.

For those wondering (I know you are), the dragon head/tail are built using two pieces of styrofoam packing from an empty TV box. The head is an empty 18-pack of Coors Light. We spray painted the whole thing green. A styrofoam ball cut in half serves as the eyes and a pair of styrofoam cones are the horns.

At the conclusion of the parade we gave our ship a proper viking funeral: All but the styrofoam was burned in a pyre on the beach as the fireworks burst overhead. Much beer was consumed.

All in all it was an awesome event. My plastic axe was hungry and I was sorely tempted to pillage and plunder a few shoreside cottages but my wife had her hand on the tiller. And my 86-year-old grandmother would have none of it.

Me want

Here's some ultimate nerdity that I would nevertheless gladly wear (look closely/zoom in on thumbnails below): http://www.threadless.com/product/2293/There_and_Back_Again.

I wonder if the Tolkien Estate will be putting the smack down on this, though.

Lansdale and Keene: Two tastes that taste great together

Over the last couple weeks I’ve managed to plow through two of Joe Lansdale’s Hap and Leonard series of novels and Brian Keene’s City of the Dead. I enjoyed the heck out of all of them and thought I’d write a combined review here.

(As an aside, my posting has recently suffered quite a bit, and that’s because the high school team I’ve been covering for the local paper is playing in the Super Bowl today. From Thankgiving through the playoffs, Massachusetts high school football is crazy. I plan to get back to posting on a more regular schedule).

As I’ve said before, Joe Lansdale tells a story as well as any author writing today. Reading one of his books is like listening to a weathered Texan grandfather who saw time in the South Pacific in the Big One spinning raw war stories seasoned with equal parts humor and horror.

The two books I read were The Two-Bear Mambo and Bad Chili. In The Two-Bear Mambo Hap and Leonard set out to find Florida Grange, Leonard’s gorgeous ex-girlfriend. Florida disappeared while investigating the suspicious suicide of a black criminal, found dead in his jail cell in the Ku Klux Klan infested town of Grovetown.

Hap and Leonard are both martial arts experts and The Two-Bear Mambo features a memorable fight in a Grovetown diner that Lansdale describes as an episode of The Andy Griffith Show by way of Deliverance. Lansdale’s fights aren’t the stylized, dramatized stuff of Quentin Tarantino films, but short, fast, ugly, and dirty.

Lansdale always kicks off his books with a gripping action scene that combines drama with comedy. In The Two-Bear Mambo Leonard has just set fire to a crack house across the street, spilling a motley assortment of low-lifes into the East Texas night. Bad Chili features the two men attacked by a rabid squirrel while taking target practice in the woods with a pistol. Yes, I’m serious.

Bad Chili took a while to heat up (pardon the pun) but I very much enjoyed the slow, deliberate pace with which Lansdale sets up its frenetic payoff of a finish. In this one, Leonard’s boyfriend Raul leaves him for a biker and when both turn up dead the police point the finger at Leonard. He and Hap begin an investigation into the death that exposes an underground crime ring of violent gay pornography and larceny.

You have experience to fully appreciate Lansdale’s always-entertaining writing style. Here’s a description of a barber-shop owner from Bad Chili that I found hilarious and also brilliant in its details, immediately sketching a believable, real character:

Finally a man came over to help us. He was short and pale-skinned and had his dark hair combed back tight and plastered with something so shiny you could almost see your reflection in it. He had one of those pencil-thin mustaches like forties movie stars wore, ones make you look like you had a drink of chocolate milk and forgot to wipe your mouth. He had his colorful shirt open almost to his navel, and let me tell you, that was no treat to view. He had a chest like a bird and a little potbelly and a thin straight line of hair that ran from chest to navel and looked as if it had been provided by the nose hairs the blonde had clipped. He was wearing a gold medallion on a chain around his neck. The medallion reminded me of those aluminum-foil coins you unwrap and find chocolate inside. He must have been on the bad side of forty. A face, a body like that, you’re not born with it. It takes some real abuse and neglect to create.

As with all the two other Hap and Leonard novels I’ve read to date (Savage Season and Mucho Mojo), The Two-Bear Mambo and Bad Chili are highly recommended. I’m looking forward to picking up Rumble Tumble next.

City of the Dead is an absolutely gonzo novel. Graphic gore and sex, morbid humor, religious issues, cosmic tragedy, and more are splashed all over its pages in an entertaining package, albeit not one for the easily offended or the faint of heart.

Keene takes the familiar trope of zombie apocalypse but instead of attributing the cause to biochemical spill or ancient curse or interstellar plague Keene’s zombies are possessed by the souls of demons from the void. When they inhabit the bodies of the dead they take on the deceased person’s memories, which them doubly dangerous. In City of the Dead zombies can speak, use guns, drive cars, communicate and coordinate their tactics, etc. Animals, including dogs, birds, alligators, are zombified, too. Humans don’t stand a chance in this scenario.

A small group of humans manages to fight their way into New York to take refuge in Ramsey Tower, a reportedly indestructible skyscraper where a few hundred human survivors have holed up. The tower is a fortress, but the humans have underestimated the zombies’ intelligence and force they ultimately bring to bear to force an entry.

Keene’s book is full of morbidly funny humor: A zombie sings “the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire” after setting fire to a home with human defenders on the second floor. A zombie, ready to throw a grenade, has his hand shot off, and the grenade falls at his feet and explodes, blowing him to bits. “Now that’s what I call a hand grenade!” another zombie quips. Think of Army of Darkness level of humor.

At the same time the book takes seriously the existence of God and the demons that inhabit the bodies of the zombies. Called the Sissquim, they once walked the Earth but were banished to the outer spheres by God millennia ago. As a result they despise God and kill and eat humans out of that spite. They want to see His most beloved creation and the planet itself utterly destroyed.

City of the Dead is marred by a few lapses in logic. The zombies at times are portrayed as attacking in mindless waves, like Romero-style zombies; at other times they operate with a sense of self-preservation and shy away from shotgun blasts and so forth. The humans defending Ramsey Tower—some of which are hard-bitten military veterans with combat experience—woefully overestimate the building’s defenses, holes that are obvious to any half-attentive reader (the damn building has windows—even though they’re reinforced glass, how can they stand up to a zombie-driven truck at full speed, let alone explosives?)

If City of the Dead sounds a little like a mess, well, it is. I’m not sure how Keene intended the book to be read, as farce or serious fiction. It’s both (probably a little more of the former), but if you’re looking for a book that tells a rip-roaring, entertaining story, City of the Dead succeeds. I listened to the Audio Realms production while driving to work and I can honestly say it made my commute a much more enjoyable experience.