Customer Reviews

The Lost Oasis/The Sargasso Ogre (Doc Savage (Nostalgia Ventures))

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Nostalgia Ventures and Anthony Tollin have teamed up to do a comprehensive reprint of several Street & Smith pulp heroes. At present, they are doing double reprints of The Shadow and Doc Savage. Shortly, they will start new series reprinting The Avenger and The Whisperer. All have complete pulp texts (no edits or removals, like past reprints), tho reset so its easier to read, the original illustrations, reprinted covers (one is used as the cover of the book, but both original pulp covers are shown on the back), and several additional articles and additions.

Hopefully, they can succeed to reprinting all these characters in these new editions, they are all excellent.

While all the Doc Savage novels were reprinted by Bantam, for those (like me) who have these reprints, the reason for getting these new volumes is the chance to read the original stories (WITHOUT the editing that occured in the Bantams, including in a few rare cases a LOT of text), see the original illustrations and covers, and the great additional articles.

This volume (#7 in their series) reprints "the Lost Oasis" (Sept 33) and "the Sargasso Ogre" (Oct 33). We get the cover of "The Lost Oasis" as the cover of this volume, and both original pulp covers are on the back.

"The Lost Oasis" deals with both a lost dirigible and a lost oasis, slavers and the like.

"The Sargasso Ogre" deals with pirates and amazons in the Sargasso Sea.

Extras in this volume include:

An Intermission article by pulp historian Will Murray, on the writing of these 2 stories AND a reprint of the Doc Savage daily comic strip samples that where done and based on "The Sargasso Ogre". These strip samples had previously been shown in Millenium Comic's "Manual of Bronze".

The Lost Oasis

This book started slowly for me because of the somewhat odd circumstances that begin the story. But it got better and better as the plot developed. Plenty of interesting and exciting events took place, and by the end, my attention was rapt, as seems to be the case when I read any Doc Savage adventure.

The Sargasso Ogre

Will Murray says that this was Lester Dent's personal favorite Doc story. After reading it, I can't say that it's my favorite, but it was certainly fun. In this story, the slowest part for me was the middle portion. But the beginning and final chunks contained plenty of motion and intrigue.

Despite the slow parts, this is as good as adventure stories get, and so I still give it a 5-star rating. Even the slow parts have more motion to them than other fiction.

Here's a fun jungle adventure. We have a fair of evil slavers, a lost airship, a beautiful aviatrix, a diamond mine full of slaves (ok, so that is pretty standard, even today). In this Lost Oasis there are also a large number of venomous vampires, and carnivorous plants that can happily handle vultures and larger.

Doc and Rennie are happily minding their own business in Manhattan when they notice a reward being offered for Doc's whereabouts, of a million dollars. Something is up, they learn, clearly, and end up on the trail of the clearly captured aviatrix.

Flight, African action, danger, capture, and breakout all happen at breakneck speed afterwards.


3.5 out of 5

As a fan of Doc Savage, I consider myself fortunate to have collected all of the Bantam Paperback reprints of the original 181 Doc Savage Magazines. Written by Lester Dent, under the pen name of Kenneth Robeson, the pulp magazine was published as a monthly beginning in 1933 to 1949. (For the last few years it was a quarterly.) In 1964, Bantam began their series of paperbacks, which ran for 26 years. As time allows, I will give brief descriptions/reviews of the entire series. In The lost Oasis, #6 in the Bantam Series, creator Robeson keeps most of the suspense and action for the last one-third of the book. This is unlike most of the other tales, where action is maintained throughout, usually in the guise of one or more of Doc's team of adventurers in life-threatening peril. This adventure begins in New York and continues, via blimp, across the Atlantic to darkest Africa and an oasis surrounded by carnivorous plants and poisonous snakes. It all deals with the discovery of one of the world's wealthiest diamond mines, vampire bats that have been bred to produce venom, and enforced slavery. And, as usual, there's a beautiful woman who falls for the stoic Doc. The Man of Bronze and his five assistants liberally use their crime-fighting inventions battling overwhelming odds. Even though most of the action is saved for the latter part of the book, once it comes, it comes in great gobs. The writing is true pulp fiction: fast, simple, direct, and Robeson does his usually fine job of making everything seem plausible.

Here's a fun jungle adventure. We have a fair of evil slavers, a lost airship, a beautiful aviatrix, a diamond mine full of slaves (ok, so that is pretty standard, even today). In this Lost Oasis there are also a large number of venomous vampires, and carnivorous plants that can happily handle vultures and larger.

Doc and Rennie are happily minding their own business in Manhattan when they notice a reward being offered for Doc's whereabouts, of a million dollars. Something is up, they learn, clearly, and end up on the trail of the clearly captured aviatrix.

Flight, African action, danger, capture, and breakout all happen at breakneck speed afterwards.