Customer Reviews

Creature From The Black Lagoon: Times Black Lagoon (Universal Monsters (Dh Press))

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Let me start by saying the Creature is my favorite of the classic Universal monsters...
The premise of the book sounded interesting...time-travelling back to the prehistoric period to learn about the Gill Man in his natural habitat. But once you meet the monsters, so to speak, it removes the mystery of the Creature seen in the films. It's like being in Disney and seeing Mickey behind the castle with his head off smoking a cigarette.
The ending very much reminded me of a classic monster movie where there's an epic world-threatening crisis that is very quickly resolved to finish the story up all nice and tidy so the credits can roll.

Like the previous reviewer, I snarfed this paperback on impulse. As a kid in 1954, I was duly mesmerized by Blacky LaGoon's film trilogy (which I am happy to see on Amazon as a pristine, if only 2-D, DVD set). And here, it seemed from the beautiful cover-art, he came *again*!

_TBL_ starts out a bit like a nautical _Stargate_: The bright young scholar gives a heretical talk about possible amphibian links to humanity and is tomatoed by his professional audience - except for one old coot who takes him aside to offer the hidden reality behind his amateur speculations. In this case it is not a Stargate at Cheyenne Mountain, but the fragmentary record of the hushed-up, scientifically-impossible appearance of the Creature in 1954 (as per the film trilogy).

Up to this point di Filippo does fine, constructing a very authentic academic/marine biological atmosphere and giving his main characters remarkably deep and interesting personalities. I was happily anticipating a departmental fricas over funding, an _Apocalypse Now_-type expedition up today's Amazon to you-know-where, of course to find at least one, but perhaps more gillpersons. Imagine the ruckus that would have caused not only on campus, but amongst creationists, animal-rights activists, et al.

Alas, it was not to be. Instead the scholar has a friend who just happens to have made a pocket time machine, to whisk him and his girlfriend back a few Earth-ages to the Devonian, where they meet nice, friendly, and conveniently telepathic gillies. Turns out that the 1954 Creature was one of their badly-devolved brethren with Terminator attitudes. Hence, after the hero & heroine have at least temporarily sated their recurring desire for Devonian swamp-sex, the rest of the story is telepathic & flipperfight good gills vs. evil gills, aided/complicated by humans with time machines. This is a bit much, particularly since the contest rages across a present-era college campus & city, apparently to only normal surprise/annoyance of the locals. Well, perhaps the town in question is Innsmouth, and this sort of thing happens around the campus every Friday night.

Thanks to di Filippo for taking on this challenge. It brought Blacky back to life after all these decades, and that was fun. But I'd still like him to rewrite the second half of the story.

The beautiful cover art fooled many a monster fan when this one hit the shelves,and i'm here o warn you,speaking as a monster fan....IT'S REALLY LAME!
The novel takes place in the future,and begins interestingly enough with a student studying the legend of the Gill man and becoming enthralled.
This leads him to go on an expedition to find the Creature's origins...by using his I-pod to go back n time(!),where he finds that the Creature descended from a race of aliens!
The creatures remind one a little TOO much of the kind of forgotten civilizations that H.P Lovecraft would write about,and melding that in a Universal horror way,just dosen't work.
And that the Creature is nothing but a violent MUTANT is sad indeed for our friend,the gill man.
The characters are largely unmemorable and inconsistent.
Sex seemed out of place but didn't bother me so much....so two young people had sex in the Devonian Age,sounds kind of cool....it was the MINDLESS action that got me.
This story was more Stephen Sommers than Jack Arnold as dumb action scene after dumb action scene,repeat themselves frequently.
It would be a wise move to pack some big guns if your on a dinosaur safari,but someone should have told the author to do his homework.
The rifles they carry are Barret .50 sniper rifles,basically an anti-tank weapon,that holds a ten round magazine and is semi-automatic.
In this it's full auto(!) and has no recoil(!)....huh?
How about the "Creature invasion" sequence at the end?
Did that part make ANY sense?
Wouldn't it be pretty big news?
Nope....no one seems to care that Florida got invaded by fifty Creatures from the Black lagoon...no big deal I guess.
To call the book dumb,would be kind,so i'll just call it boring an innane.
Come on people...i'm sure some of us out there can make an exciting story about Universal's last great movie monster.
Give it a try!(Just don't read this book).

So, you hear that the author of The Steampunk Trilogy, which is one of the most fantastic books I've ever read, is writing this book, and you think, WOW, I can't wait. And then you read it, and you wish you'd never heard of it. That's exactly what this book is like.

First of all, I'm no prude, but, um, wow is there an enormous, unneccesary amount of non-plot-furthering sex in this book.

Second of all, the book takes place in the future, but the attempts to sound futuristic are anachronistically clunky and possibly trademark infringing, as well as flat-out offensive. To wit - a guy born in 1985 muses that his childhood was like Huck Finn with added postmodern technology like "computers, Walkmen, VCRs." Um, this book was published in 2006 - did any teenagers in 2006 really wax nostalgic about Walkmen and VCRs? Or were they thinking, "Oh, you mean my Tivo and DVD player?" (And how could he miss the obvious CELL PHONE reference there, a device that this wildly ubiquitous among teenagers?). Likewise, in this future, MicroSoft will have a successful iPod competitor - called the View Master? There's already a View Master - I recall them from my childhood - and they're a lot more reliable than anything Windows makes. Most irritating was the snarky comment about topless women cavorting as a collateral consequence of "President Clinton's" "sweeping lactivist legislation." This smacks of anti-feminism. I WAS a breastfeeding mom, and this kind of legislation sounds like heaven to me, not something to grouse about. Maybe I wouldn't be irritated if the rest of the book was consistently puritanical and didn't feature the above-mentioned constant graituitous sex.

Oh, and can we talk for a moment about how wildly improbable all of this is? I mean, they decided to use an iPod in an aquatic enviroment? That's like putting a screen door on a submarine, literally. (And apparently they aren't waterproof in the future, either - they spend half the book panicking that it will get wet.) And never mind the fact that humans couldn't, you know, breathe Devonian air...

All of this weakens any plot the book might actually have. I just couldn't get this stuff out of my brain to enjoy the book.

Smart women read sci-fi and horror, people. Humor us, please. The Steampunk Trilogy did a brilliant job playing on the sexism and racism of the Victorian Era in a way that was thought- and squeam- provoking. But this is not The Steampunk Trilogy. It's not even an enjoyable pulp, as if that was some kind of excuse for bad books. It's just disappointing. If you must read it, please read his better work FIRST because you'd be crazy to miss out on it. And then go look for my copy of this book at the used book store, because that's where it's headed and you don't want to pay full price.

You'd think time travel through use of an iPod would be FUN, right? Nope. I was excited when I saw this book listed at Amazon. One look at the AMAZING cover, and I just had to have it. I'm a huge fan of the Universal Monsters, with the Gill-Man being my fave. Unfortunately, I was not thrilled by the execution of this tale. First of all this book is NOT FOR CHILDREN AT ALL! I was absolutely stunned, shocked and dismayed to see the profanity that proliferates throughout. 'F bombs' fly at will and are completely unnecessary. I don't mind such coarse dialogue in the proper venue... but in a book featuring one of the Universal Monsters? Yikes! It is pretty cringe worthy. I must also note that there is quite a bit of casual religious blasphemy as well. If you are sensitive about that, then this book isn't for you. (And to think I had thought of blind buying this for my nieces! Sheesh!)

The liberal usage of 'four letter words' is not the only clue to the authors personal politics. Here is a quote concerning topless students of both sexes: "The repercussions of sweeping lactivist legislation passed in 2013 and signed by President Clinton during her second term were still being sorted out..."

His take on 'Conservative minded' folks: "The Gill-People were more conservative in their thinking, more group-minded and more eternal. This very lack of adaptability had no doubt contributed to their general extinction." Now, I'm all for political discourse (or in this case disCOARSE) but, is this really the proper venue for this? Not at all. Totally inappropriate. This type of book should whisk you away into a fantasy setting for the purposes of good, 'old fashioned' FUN.

As a FUN book, this is a failure that will hopefully be lost in the eddies of time's lagoon. I just hope it hasn't damaged my love of the Gill-Man forever. If you are looking for a great FUN novel featuring a Universal Monster, hunt down a copy of Jeff Rovin's AMAZING Return oftThe Wolf Man If you need to have a Gill-Man fix, check out Arthur Adams incredible artwork that retells the first film: Universal Monsters: Creature from the Black Lagoon

Heh. A Creature from the Black Lagoon novel? I picked this up on impulse and found it be rather enjoyable. It's a bit slow getting started, but the pace keeps picking up all the way to the end. The story is not a retread of the old movie, but a SciFi/pulpy tale sequel of sorts. I'm not usually a fan of liscenced properties, but this book has me interested in this new series from Dark Horse, and am looking forward the Elizabeth Hand's Bride of Frankenstein novel.

I only bought this book because I was in a book-buying mood and the one I wanted was sold out. Thinking that it had a nice cover and being in the mood for something silly and pulpy, I decided to give it a go. A boy this IS pulp indeed.

The story has two friends in the Deep South grow up to be megalo-scientists. One a marine biologist and the other a professor of Quantum Physics, or something. Wishing to capturing to capture a Gill Man and knowing that they only existed in great numbers in the pre-dinosaur days, our heroes make a time machine out of an I-Pod (yes, you read me correctly-a friggin' I-Pod) and go back millions of years to say 'How' to a peaceful race of Gill Men.

Up until about halfway, this book is just nothing but hot air and almost ends up being the kind you'll chuck away without finishing. But finally, when they do travel through time, it gets much better and passes much quicker. The Gill Men are great characters and lots of fun to read about. It kinda outstays its welcome towards the end though as plot threads are tied together in a rather contrived and hasty manner. I didn't like that.

A fun read, but don't expect William Shakespeare. His retarded hillbilly cousin Ralph Shakespeare could write a better story than this.

It's 2015, and seeking a way to adapt humans to the new environment caused by global warming, two marine scientists go back in time to find and study the Gill-man.

The book respects and pays homage to the original 1950s films, while bringing the concerns and themes right up to date in the 21st century. There are just so many good ideas in here: beginning with the fact that time travel is possible - but the earliest you can go is 300 millions ago (no trips to yesterday), and the idea that the time machine is controlled by an iPod (shades of a Delorean - "If you're gonna go, go in style.") To say any more is to risk spoilers, but over the course of the book we find out what really happened in the 1950s and the unexpected origin of the Gill-man (make that Gill-people). Even if you are not a big Creature fan, I still recommend this book. All the backstory is filled in (which can make the first few chapters a little slow if you've seen the films a dozen times), and just on its merits as a time travel book it's worth reading.

Oh, and the climax -- the last 60 pages -- simply will not let you go. I know the odds are slim, but I'd love to see these images on the big screen.

Once I started into this book I couldn't put it down. If you love anything about the Creature and any stories dealing with time travel you should love this book. It is very well written and puts a nice spin on the Creature story. It ties in very well to the original films. A must read for Creature fans!

Despite my long-standing love of this shambling, soggy Creature, I may never have bought this novel had I not seen it was written by Paul Di Filippo, the highly regarded author of such collections as THE STEAMPUNK TRILOGY and novels such as COSMOCOPIA (and the wonderful A YEAR IN THE LINEAR CITY, which I read a few years ago). That's what I find so intriguing about Dark Horse's tie-in novels, that the editors have chosen such well-established, not to mention distinctly original literary fantastists, to write them (and I've already ordered ALIENS: NO EXIT, by B. K. Evenson -- Brian Evenson, another unique author I've enjoyed). So I knew this novel was bound to be a fun, assorted grab bag, and I certainly wasn't disappointed.

TIME'S BLACK LAGOON was just as enjoyable as Jeff VanderMeer's recent, action-packed Dark Horse tie-in, PREDATOR: SOUTH CHINA SEA, but with a different, more casual and friendly tone (until the end chapters, where it gets pretty damn frenzied and apocalyptic, too; let's just put it this way, there isn't just one Creature in this book -- not by a long shot -- and there are other creatures on a microscopic level that might pose an even greater threat). One reader whose comments I perused complained that the novel was slow, but the only thing slow are the wits of those who can't appreciate the novel's human, likable characters, delightful sense of humor, radical reimagining of the Creature and its origins, and such imaginative plot devices as a time machine (embodied in an iPod!) that can open a portal into the Devonian Period. The early chapters intrigue as we witness the protagonist's growing obsession with the Creature, his introduction to a time machine his researcher friend has developed, and his inevitable journey into the far-flung past. The early sequences in the Devonian, as the protagonist and his girlfriend seek out the Creature (and find much more than they bargained for), really made me feel like I was tromping through the muck along with them, sort of like "Survivorman" meets "Jurassic Park." The plot gets even more mind-blowing and head-spinning from there, but always in a perfectly accessible way. The novel is way better than it needs to be, but that's just what I would expect from an author like Di Filippo. I recommend it highly; it's good-natured, fantastically fun, witty and clever and inventive. You might even get a little awed by the time traveling science. Just a thoroughly enjoyable book.