Atomic Beasts and Where to Kill Them - Barbarians of the Storm - Book II (2022)

Dan and Fenrik's whacky hijinks continue as the search for a frozen scientist takes them into dangerous waters. But wait! Frank, Merith, and Killer from the previous book want their own subplot, and by God they're gonna get it! But wait! Erzulyn and a suit of sentient armor get to go on their own cosmic adventure! But wait! We also follow the exploits of villainous characters like Xulgog and the Nekroking! But wait! There's a talking sword too? Shit, I need a wiki to keep up with all these characters...

Whereas the previous adventure was heavily focused on Dan and Fenrik's journey, the second book in the 'Barbarians of the Storm' series, Atomic Beasts and Where to Kill Them, turns into the equivalent of what happens when your D&D players want to split the party and you end up with a slew of different adventure threads. Sometimes this kind of balancing act of wildly disparate plot threads can turn into a cumbersome slog, but author and noted Floridaman Rob Rimes is especially efficient in keeping the pace swift and all of the varying conflicts interesting.

And I mean, really, who the fuck doesn't want to read a sequence where a foul-mouthed koala bear goes on a Rambo-style murder spree against a bunch of slimy goblins?

However, I was somewhat surprised to find myself most drawn towards Erzulyn's plot thread and the journey through space and time she undergoes. While the author doesn't go overboard with it like a yawn-inducing doorstopper fantasy novel from the traditional publishing space, there is a significant amount of world-building added to Atomic Beasts... that was perhaps not as prevalent in the initial entry in the series. What I appreciate is that all of the additions to the setting, be they land, sea, or indeed otherworldly terrain, all feel like a natural extension of what was previously established in book one.

My review of Dan the Destructor mentioned the author's present tense writing style briefly, but I want to give you a snippet of the evocative prose you're getting when you crack open these books:

Frank, torn leather jacket flapping in the wind, cautiously walks towards the cavern, sword on his back, survival knife on his leg, sidearm on his hip, and sawed-off shotgun in his hand. The ground starts to elevate but the drake's tracks are still visible, as they lead up into the shallow cavern's mouth.

I don't often encounter this style of prose in the pulps I read, but damn, once you settle in to this series you couldn't imagine it being written any other way. Atomic Beasts... often comes across like a movie script to the most badass 1980's sci-fi/fantasy cinematic endeavor that never was. I'm sure if it was an actual film series, it would be cheaply made by Italian producers, filmed in the Spanish desert, have a cast of questionably dubbed Yugoslavian actors alongside a couple of random Americans in exile like Reb Brown and Cameron Mitchell.... and it would be fucking awesome.

I think my biggest gripe from the previous book in the series still exists here to a slightly larger extent. Atomic Beasts... feels incredibly episodic, which, yes, this goofy reviewer realizes this is part of an ongoing series and would be the author's intention. But it does mean that this individual entry has less opportunity to stand on its own with its own unique contribution to the series. The conclusion comes across like the ending to a weekly television serial with a number of characters in perilous situations. All I was really missing was the "SAME BAT TIME, SAME BAT CHANNEL!" narration. Again, this is not a major knock on the book or anything, just a caveat. While the 'Barbarians of the Storm' series definitely has pulp roots, this isn't like a Conan or... I dunno... a Mack Bolan - where one can drop in and out or read books out of order with little consequence. You buy book one, you're in this for the long haul, boyo.

Recommended.

Tarnsman of Gor (1966)

Tarl Cabot is transported from planet Earth to a world known as Gor - a savage land where savage people do savage things and drop Savage Elbows from the top rope. (Okay, I made that last part up.) Turns out Tarl's old pappy is from this land of Gor and needs his sonny boy to steal a magic stone from a rival city to help depose a tyrant who refuses to give up the throne and scepter. But first - a training montage! The best way for a warrior worth his salt to get around Gor is on giant pterodactyl-like birds called 'Tarns' - and wouldn't you know it? Our boy Tarl is a natural Tarnsman! He's the Tarnsman of Gor! Sheesh.

There must be a lot of haters and losers who don't like John Norman (aka John Lange, noted philosophy professor). I'm a complete neophyte to his writings and the 'controversy' surrounding them, but as I understand it, Norman had more than a few run-ins with the feminist crowd of yesteryear who were positively clutching their pearls in outrage that his books featured sexy Boris Vallejo cover art and writing with hints of S&M, bondage, and the enslavement of some of the female characters. What's funny is my limited research into this subject turned up waaaay more female fans of the Gor books online than dudes, which tells us that females are just as enticed or curious about BDSM culture as men can be. How many copies did that damn Fifty Shades of Grey book sell anyway?

Anyway, because of all the hoopla, I curiously went into John Norman's Tarnsman of Gor expecting something kind of racy and controversial, but what I found was just a Burroughs-esque science-fantasy story that I greatly enjoyed. Now, I understand that perhaps it's really the later novels in the Gor series that might up the ante as far as the light erotica elements and the S&M philosophizing are concerned (again, I'm only going on the word of others here), but Tarnsman of Gor on its own merits is pretty damn tame by today's standards. Yeah, there's slavery present in the world of Gor, but there are men owned as slaves too. So I'm not sure where the narrative comes from that every female in Norman's world is a beaten and battered slave other than yesteryear's cancel pigs deliberately misrepresenting Norman's material. Interestingly, much of the aforementioned discourse I've seen online slamming Norman's writing comes from the white beardy male feminist types who haunt liberal arts college cafeterias across the land, which... yeah, that actually checks out. She's still not gonna sleep with you, bro.

But let's get off the tedious culture war nonsense and actually discuss some of the content here. Tarnsman of Gor is written in a journal style from the perspective of our main character Tarl Cabot. Our hero is swept away from a camping expedition in a snowy New England clime and dropped into a world that's referred to as a 'counter-earth' because it shares orbit around the sun with Earth but its position is preposterously opposite of the Earth, thus it's always eclipsed by the sun and never seen by us silly earthlings. But just when you think it's all space travel pablum, we get shields, spears, giant bird mounts, oversized insects talking to our hero, beautiful women to be rescued, vile assassins to battle against, sword fights galore... it's basically all the elements you'd get in a pulpy Conan continuation novel from decades ago. What's not to love if you're a fan of this genre?

I also found it interesting that the way Tarnsman of Gor wraps up leaves it as something that could be read as a standalone novel. There's obviously room left for a sequel, but the author concluded the events of this novel satisfactorily enough that one could drop in, sample the flavor, and get out before the crazy kink proselytizing (allegedly) begins.

Recommended.

Punisher: Suicide Run (2017; collecting comics from 1993-1994)

Frank Castle - The Punisher - has a cunning plan: use himself as bait to lure every possible criminal scum in the city into a skyscraper and then blow that son of a bitch to kingdom come faster than you can say "Building 7 of the World Trade Cen---" CANCELLED. In the wake of Punisher's apparent demise, pretenders to the throne of New York's primo vigilante arise - some good, some evil, and some living in the shades of grey. Everything soon culminates in a small-town shootout with the scattered remnants of the criminal gangs, the faux-Punishers, and maybe, just maybe, the real deal Punisher himself back from the dead. Behold, Frank Castle being rescued by a retarded child!

We need no introduction to the Punisher (who also happens to be my favorite comic book character). He's the guy who kills criminals and triggers all the right kind of snowflakes with his logo alone - including, it seems, his original creator, king cuck Gerry Conway. What a lame last name. 😏

Anyway, this compilation by the likes of Chuck Dixon and Steven Grant collects issues of the Punisher, Punisher War Journal, and Punisher War Zone comic book lines and catalogues the aforementioned 'suicide run' gambit of one Frank Castle as he attempts to take out most of the big players in the seedy underbelly of New York City in one fell swoop.

In some ways, the "Suicide Run" arc was Marvel's own stab at the copycat character craze that sold a lot of comics over at rival company DC Comics - the various 'Supermen' that appeared to try and take the original's place in the "Reign of the Supermen!" arc that followed the apparent death of Superman and also the pretenders to the mantle of the Batman in the Knightfall series after Batman is seemingly put out of commission for a time. Thus, in Punisher: Suicide Run, it's a slew of would-be Punishers: the British version of Punisher known as Outlaw, former cops Lynn Michaels aka 'Lady Punisher' and Edward Dyson aka Payback, rich media guy Dean Swaybrick (affectionally known as 'Yuppunisher'), the former Navy SEAL known as Hitman, and Desmond Kline, a former postal worker who goes, well... postal.

What's funny about Marvel's take on the copycat characters is none of them are treated as anything close to the real deal Punisher. In fact, I'd be so bold as to say most of the would-be Punishers are complete butt-monkeys as far as this story arc is concerned. One of them is permanently iced in possibly the most humiliating manner possible for a wannabe superhero approximately one page after he makes his big debut on the streets, while the likes of Dean Swaybrick does little more than cause trouble and make a fool of himself on prime time television. Perhaps the most time is dedicated to the pairing of Lynn Michaels and Payback, but after a brief moment of glory taking down some hoodlums they're rounded up by the vigilante hunting agency known as V.I.G.I.L. (some of the de-facto bad guys of this story arc), beaten and battered like there's no tomorrow, and then spend the rest of the story as scared lambs on the run - a devastatingly quick fall from grace.

Perhaps this was done to show that Frank Castle and Frank Castle alone is really the only guy resilient, crazy, and mentally scarred enough to take on the mantle of the Punisher and survive for longer than a few days. And the version of Castle we get here is indeed one tough son of a bitch. I enjoyed Frank being smug and self-assured during his insane escapades of gathering all of the gangs into the skyscraper before literally detonating the place, but I feel the character is actually at his best in the second half of the series. Bloodied but not beaten, Frank is paired up with the sheriff of a sleepy upstate town and is soon expressing himself with his favorite form of contemporary art: shotgun graffiti.

My biggest complaint about Punisher: Suicide Run is the inconsistent nature of the artwork. In part due to this series being a big crossover event that spanned three different comic books, it tapped into various illustrators throughout the run. In one issue you may find some spectacular pieces, but in the next issue you'll encounter some sloppy sketch style artwork that was passed off as finished work. It's a shame the entire series couldn't have the same art team, but such is the nature of comic books sometimes.

I know it was not exactly trendy to admit to enjoying early 90's cheese in comic books for several years, but seeing as how that's the era I first became interested in comics, I highly enjoyed the trip down memory lane back to this period. You will never forget you're in the 90's reading Suicide Run, from some of the garish color and fashion choices on characters (hello, flannel) to some particularly interesting digs at the Clinton administration (including a direct jab at the Waco massacre carried out by Slick Willie's goons). Remember when mainstream comics could actually be based? Who knew?!

Recommended.

Conan: Blood of the Serpent (2022)

Conan the barbarian back in his younger, sword-for-hire days meets blonde bombshell pirate lass Valeria for the first time and naturally wants to get into her pants. But Valeria is a strong, independent mercenary and don't need no man. So the pair of them embark on a never-ending and utterly stupid Benny Hill chase through the hinterlands where Conan has to fight a bunch of rabid animals and Valeria has to evade a magic-using bounty hunter. Crom, I've never prayed to you before, I have no tongue for it, but please don't let this author try to write another Conan tale...

One generally understands you shouldn't always judge a book by its cover, but given the utter bland, banal, generic, and cancel culture safe front cover adorning Blood of the Serpent, there's enough anecdotal evidence here to say the old, hackneyed cliche may be wrong. It's not that Blood of the Serpent is poorly written per se, it's just that nothing happens. Even the action scenes seem to have pregnant pauses built into the prose. How do you manage to make sword and sandal action boring? Instead of moving from story beat to story beat as pulp fantasy ought to, the author stops to give us languid descriptions of things, not in the Howardian sparkling purple prose manner, mind, but in the tedious and insipid stylings of cookie-cutter high fantasy novels.

The fact that this story is intended to take place in Conan's timeline directly before Robert E. Howard's Red Nails really made me understand just how low quality Blood of the Serpent actually is, because either the author, publisher, or both made the startling decision to include Red Nails within this tome. As soon as Blood of the Serpent ends, we segue directly into Red Nails. It's like going from a kid's first piano recital to Beethoven. One writer is clearly a neophyte and one is a master, and it's not hard to figure out which one is which.

I'll be honest, I don't know anything about author S.M. Stirling's writing pedigree coming into Blood of the Serpent and what exactly qualified him to be the next Conan continuation novel writer, but based on this book alone, I'd say he's an incredibly poor match for this series, unless the publisher's goal was indeed to make something bland, banal, generic, and cancel culture safe in a contemporary market that tries to punish anything that doesn't immediately adhere to 'The Message'. And given how much the character of Valeria is beefed up to be an undefeatable level 50 Girl-boss who is literally kicking men in the balls for leering at her wrong, I don't think I'm far off the mark here. Then we get to the book's afterword, where the author disgustingly 'apologizes' for Robert E. Howard being a hot-blooded man in the 1920's and 30's. Stirling doesn't explicitly say the hostage video line of "it was wrong then and it's wrong now", but he may as well have.

I spit on this sentiment. I wanted to read this novel in the hope that some new Conan - one of the staples of escapist fiction - would give me respite from the culture war. Instead, I find it meekly flying the banner of the enemy. By Crom, were he able to find life free from the page, Howard's Conan would take up the sword in his mighty thews and smote this vile pretender tome from existence and consign it to the blackest, everlasting depths of the stygian abyss.

Funeral in Berlin (1964)

Len Deighton's anonymous spy hero is selected to facilitate the stealth defection of a Soviet scientist from East Germany into West Germany by means of a mock funeral procession. The only problem is everyone from the dubious British intelligence contact in west Berlin to the gruff Soviet colonel on the east side of the wall claim the defection will go down without a hitch... and our hero is either savvy or cynical enough to know almost everyone involved is lying. In the midst of this is an Israeli agent, a missing cat named Confucius, and the terrible cover name of 'Edmund Dorf'. Grab your inflatable Batman suits, we're going back to the Cold War and crossing through Checkpoint Charlie, kiddos!

Similar to the story of how I ended up cracking open Farewell, My Lovely, I came to reading Funeral in Berlin for the first time because I've adored the 1966 film version starring Michael Caine for many years and had Len Deighton on my to-read list for just as long. Now that I have read him, I'm kicking myself for not doing it sooner, because I quickly came to understand Deighton is a master of espionage fiction on the same level as the great Ian Fleming. Although it must be said... the amount of black coffee, cigarettes, and booze this character consumes on a daily basis might actually put Bond to shame.

Sometimes referred to as a 'working class spy', Deighton's unnamed protagonist does seem to find himself involved in the less glamorous end of the spy game. Instead of dining with fashion model looking femme fatales or gambling with baddies in Monte Carlo casinos, our hero is getting bopped on the back of the head by hoodlums and hassled about his expense reports by his boss and secretary. There's no comic strip villain in a secret lair to contend with either. Here the players are mostly grounded in the harsh realities of the Cold War with the specter of World War II's consequences always following in their wake.

Deighton's writing is rife with Chandler-esque descriptive passages giving the reader hints as to just how intelligent and perceptive the character really is despite his best efforts to lull everyone into a false sense of security by playing the part of a doltish dullard. Indeed, it would seem our hero is never short of a quip or a quick-witted retort when his patience is tested:

I looked at Johnnie Vulkan. Growing older seemed to agree with him. He didn't

look a day over forty, his hair was like a tailored Brillo pad and his face tanned. He wore a well-cut Berlin suit of English pinhead worsted. He leaned back in his chair and pointed a finger lazily towards me. His hand was so sunburned that his nails seemed pale pink. 

He said, 'Before we start, let's get one thing clear. No one here needs help; you are superfluous to requirements as far as I am concerned. Just remember that; stay out of the way and everything will be O.K. Get in the way and...' He shrugged his shoulders. 'This is a dangerous town.' He kept his hand pointing into my face and gave a flash of a smile. 

I looked at him for a moment. I looked at his smile and at his hand. 

'Next time you point a finger at someone, Johnnie,' I said, 'remember that three of

your fingers are pointing back at you.' He lowered his hand as though it had become heavy.

The author admits in the book's afterword to being completely smitten with the city of Berlin in real life and spent plenty of time there, which thus results in the descriptive flavoring of the setting being so rich and lively. In addition to being a provocative and sometimes droll spy story, Funeral in Berlin is also a window into a very specific snapshot in time: post-war Germany finding itself again and the sometimes bizarre, sometimes harrowing co-existence of east and west powers operating in the shadow of the Berlin Wall.

I couldn't put this book down and before I even turned over the last page, I hastily acquired a small stack of Len Deighton novels to read in the future. Funeral in Berlin is technically the third in a series of four novels featuring the unnamed hero, but I found nothing in this novel that made it seem not reading the prior books first would ruin this one or leave the reader in the dark. Recommended.

Nobody Lives Forever (1986)

Secret agent 007 has a bounty placed on his head by his old enemy SPECTRE, and every assassin, gangster, and two-bit hood that isn't currently running for public office is attempting to collect. It's a mad dash from Europe to the Florida Keys with Bond as the target! Crooked cops, an all-female bodyguard agency, double agents, Bond slumming it by eating shrimp cocktails in grotty Florida bars, and giant vampire bats! Da-da-DA-DA!

My re-reads of the John Gardner 007 novels have been something of a Marmite affair so far. On one hand, I enjoyed License Renewed, For Special Services, and Role of Honor, but on the other hand absolutely despised the incredibly overrated Icebreaker. On novel number five, Nobody Lives Forever, I've come to the first Gardner Bond that's truly stumped me about how I should feel about it.

Let's start with the good things: the simple premise of Bond being the target takes the series in a new direction and I'm genuinely surprised we didn't get something like this sooner. Instead of the usual routine of Bond receiving a mission from M and going off to some exotic locale to investigate the bad guys, the mission is now simply survival. This novel is also the first direct sequel that Gardner wrote in his series. While preceding Gardner 007 novels made reference to prior missions, they could just as easily be read as standalone adventures if one felt so inclined. Here, we have a continuation from events at the end of Role of Honor where Tamil Rahani, the man who inherited leadership of SPECTRE after Bond wiped out the entire Blofeld clan, is not doing so hot after his narrow escape and wants nothing more than Bond's head on a silver platter. Quite literally.

I took no issue with the setting either, with Bond and his newfound cohorts in what becomes essentially an elongated chase sequence throughout parts of Europe with the finale taking place in and around Earnest Hemmingway territory in the southern tip of Florida. Once again, Gardner delivers some distinct and specific minute details about places I suspect he visited himself (or had damn good travel guides for), from little favors at the tables of restaurants to the type of stucco used in local shops. He even nails the Floridian aspect of prosperity alongside poverty by pointing out the fancy, lavish houses around Key West directly next to rundown tenements with unfinished sidewalks.

Then there's the not so good things, chief among them is not, surprisingly, the fact that for most of the novel Bond is paired with two Charlie's Angels rejects, one of whom runs an improbably all-female bodyguard firm that's so adept at being discrete no intelligence agency appears to know who they are. No, the worst offender for me in Nobody Lives Forever is actually how Bond himself is characterized. This man's life has been threatened more times than he could possibly remember at this point in his career, so why, when presented with the possibility that there's a bounty on his head and a bevvy of assassins on his tail, does Bond get all paranoid and sulky? Bond even starts yelling at characters at certain points, which comes across as truly bizarre and out of character.

One also has to roll their eyes at the MacGuffin that prevents Bond from simply going into hiding for a few months and letting this whole assassin business blow over... Moneypenny and his "Scottish treasure" housekeeper May have been kidnapped by SPECTRE! Oh no! Next you'll be telling me Bond forgot to put his clothes in the dryer or one of his pens just ran out of ink. Again, I applaud Gardner for doing something different in this novel, but using Bond's elderly housekeeper as a major catalyst piece of bait for the plot didn't exactly scream action-adventure extravaganza to me.

Nobody Lives Forever is a competently written page-turning thriller with plenty of enjoyable action, but it loses me in certain places with our hero acting like a grouchy child and some downright goofy plot contrivances. The first 'thumbs in the middle' Gardner 007 novel for me.

The Long Moonlight - Nightvale Book 1 (2020)

"I hate gang wars. They're coarse and rough and irritating... and they get everywhere." That's probably what the audacious thief known as Xerdes was thinking as he moved from rooftop to rooftop across the city of Menuvia. Xerdes has recently found himself in the crosshairs of rival crime lords, the city guard, hired killers, and a fellow outlaw lass who possibly just walked out of a Whitesnake music video. And all Xerdes wants is one big score to live the good life for a while... but will his next score be his last?

You all know of RazörFist, right? He's that guy on YouTube who cosplays as Bret "Hitman" Hart and has all the catchphrases like "Fuck you, I was right!" and "That's about all. Peace out. Godspeed!" Mr. Fist has also become something of an author in recent years, starting with this absolute banger known as The Long Moonlight. Coming in at a svelte 125 pages, The Long Moonlight is a delectable crossover of fantasy and noir in pulp format that simply drips with atmosphere from beginning to end. Rife with the kind of grandiloquent wordplay you'd expect from the heyday of pulps, it's unabashedly purple, but that's not a bug of the genre, it's a feature.

If you've read any press or watched any of his streams on the subject of his book series, you may know the author is refreshingly open about his writing influences: there's just as much Fritz Lieber as there is Dashiell Hammett in tone, setting, and style. There's a shot of Robert E. Howard with how some of the action is handled, and then there's a chaser of Raymond Chandler with portions of snappy dialogue. In particular, the wiseass rejoinders that emanate from main character Xerdes from time to time has an echo of Marlowe (minus the ungodly chain smoking). There's also Mr. Fist's computer gaming influences that come to the fore - the Thief series being chief among them. I'm about as good at stealth games as Joe Biden is at balancing a budget or keeping his hands off of small children, so I've never even attempted to play Thief. My only experience with these games is watching others play them, but I can absolutely see how some of the gloomy stylings of the series made their way over to The Long Moonlight.

Something else I know RazörFist enjoys are the Death Wish movies. Without spoiling too much here, there's a certain point in the story where a vengeance angle begins to unfold, and while it's not exactly Bronson-esque in the way it's executed, the brutal results do bear some vague similarities to said revenge flicks. It's good to know that even the fictional city of Menuvia can experience its own Summer of Love!

Which brings me to perhaps my only quasi-complaint about The Long Moonlight. In the midst of Menuvia's fiery but mostly peaceful protests is Inspector Coggins, a side character who features in a few brief interludes when our main character is offstage. I actually found Coggins and his no-bullshit attitude to be a pretty based character (well... for a cop, at least) - to the point where I was slightly disappointed this character's side story of solving grisly crimes and ferreting out corruption in the city guard didn't have a tad bit more time dedicated to it. I see this as a positive complaint though, for it means I found myself invested in the author's world, lore, and characters and wanted to see even more of it.

I'd be remiss if I didn't point out The Long Moonlight also features a few pieces of black and white art provided by the author himself that are peppered throughout the narrative. The art is just as evocative as the text and compliments it well, hitting the reader with a forlorn dungeon synth album cover vibe that I can get behind.

While I still heartily recommend neophytes go back and read the masters of pulp from yesteryear, there are more than enough worthy successors in this arena in the contemporary to read alongside them, and RazörFist's The Long Moonlight deserves a spot on your bookshelves if you're a pulp inclined reader. I look forward to delving into his follow-up Nightvale novella very soon.

Time Warriors No. 1 - Fuse Point (1991)

Black Jack Hogan - no, wait, I'm goddamn serious, that's the main character's name! Yes, Black Jack Hogan is an ass kicking troubleshooter carrying out secret ops for the United States of America. You know he's a true tough guy because his base of operations is a hidden monastery in the depths of Cambodia. Anyway, Hogan kinda-sorta may have possibly gotten himself killed on his last mission, except his soul wasn't... ready to depart but somehow got entwined with the soul of Brom, a barbarian warrior from another... who may have also kinda-sorta... not died... and... look... look... all you need to know is: badass modern day mercenary teams up with badass barbarian warrior to take on evil dictator from the real world and vicious warrior queen from the fantasy world. I'm so glad we could get through my usual pithy intro section without any confusion this time.

I believe it was the ever-awesome Paperback Warrior that initially put this novel on my radar. "The Time Warriors" is a sadly short-lived series by David North and published by the now-defunct Gold Eagle (they of Deathlands, Mack Bolan, et al fame) that chronicles the adventures of the aforementioned Black Jack Hogan and Brom. This novel, Fuse Point, introduces us to the concept of two warriors who can transport themselves through time and space in order to help one another in their own individual battles against the forces of evil. Readers are also acquainted with two dictatorial villains - the hilariously named Colonel Saddam (yes, we're in the early 90's, folks) and the evil Queen Raikana - both of whom have their own sinister plans to take over their respective worlds. Naturally, the only two dudes bad enough to rescue the President stop them are Hogan and Brom.

Something I found amusing here is North introduces the main character as 'John Hogan' at the outset of the novel and informs us that the 'Black Jack' is a nickname he earned during his brief boxing career, but the author seems to forget his original first name for the character about halfway through and refers to him as 'Jack Hogan' sometimes. Or maybe the first instance of 'John Hogan' is a typo or misprint. I don't know, man. I don't make the rules for these things. I just know that in my head as I'm reading this I'm going back and forth between Terry Bollea because of the character's name and Matt Hannon from Samurai Cop because of the silly-cool cover art whenever this character speaks and I kinda like it. There are several tongue-in-cheek references to wrestling peppered throughout the book, with the author describing Black Jack as having "wrestler's arms" at one point and even an impromptu wrestling match between Black Jack and one of Brom's brethren that Black Jack only survives by the skin of his teeth. David North might have been a Hulkamaniac, brother.

If you've read these kind of men's adventure novels before, you usually know you're getting workmanlike prose, and that's what we have in Fuse Point. You're not going to find anything particularly poetic here, but I will say the author is quite adept at handling the action scenes, be it the modern gunplay of Hogan's world or the Conan-esque sword and sandal stuff in Brom's world. The level of violence is definitely in the deeper end of the rated R section and there are naturally a few buxom wenches around for the Time Warrior twins to bed down occasionally. This is 1000% dude fiction and there's nothing wrong with that.

Overall, Fuse Point is a fun diversion and I'm genuinely looking forward to continuing the adventures of Black Jack and Brom in the near future. (Or maybe in the past?) Recommended.