Raymond's Reviews #183

%T Give Me Liberty
%A Frank Miller
%A Dave Gibbons
%I Dell
%D January 1992
%O paperback, US$20.00
%G ISBN 0-440-50466-5

This graphic novel is a brutal, cynical, graphically gory near-future thriller. The viewpoint character is Martha Washington, 1 21st-century black slum kid who joins the Peace Force and becomes entangled in high politics. The storyline is melodramatic and cliched, the continuity poor, and the worldbuilding shoddy --- but the art isn't bad, and the whole is relieved by occasional touches of black humor. Overall, I didn't like it, but I can see that a comics fan might.

%T The Green Millennium
%A Fritz Leiber
%I Collier Books
%D 1992
%O paperback, US$4.95
%P 219
%G ISBN 0-02-022346-3

Here's a classy reprint of Fritz Leiber's madcap 1953 farce about a most unusual sort of alien invasion. Phil Gish is the archetypal nebbish until the day Lucky the green cat wanders into his life. To get him back, he tangles with an assortment of thugs, religious fanatics, scientists, mobsters, mysterious satyr-people, and the Federal Bureau of Loyalty. Many details of the 2003 Lieber projected in 1953 ring eerily true in 1992. Recommended.

%T The Yngling and the Circle of Power
%A John Dalmas
%I Baen
%D February 1992
%O paperback, US$4.99
%P 360
%G ISBN 0-671-72106-2

I've commented before on John Dalmas's fascination with the warrior-mystic (RR#10, RR#66); most of what I said in RR#10 applies here. The first in this series, The Yngling, was interesting; the second (Homecoming) was entertaining; this third is mostly boring. Nils Jarnhann resigns as law-speaker of the Neovikings to wander east and tangle with Mongols and yetis and Tibetan mystics. As usual, the results are a weird mix of carnography and New-Age psychobabble. Yawn.

RECEIVED BUT NOT REVIEWED: Spartacus by T. L. Mancour (Pocket). Random trekfic.

Crystal World by Isidore Haiblum. Poor-looking sequel to a wretched prequel (Specterworld, RR#133).

Mutant Star by Karen Haber (Bantam). Sequel to an original I loathed.

The Avenger by Louise Cooper (Bantam) Book III of YA quest fantasy.

The Caspak novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs (Del Rey). Three volumes: The Land That Time Forgot, The People That Time Forgot, Out Of Time's Abyss. ERB at his cheesiest. Of antiquarian interest only. The Dragon Token by Melanie Rawn (DAW).

Blood Trail by Tanya Huff (DAW)