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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fast paced fantasy fun,
By
This review is from: Seven Footprints to Satan (Mass Market Paperback)
I know that it is a bad idea to start an A. Merritt novel at bedtime, but I couldn't resist starting Seven Footprints to Satan. 4 hours later I had finished an amazing adventure breatlessly.This novel tells the story of a man who meets up with Satan (who in a stroke of genius looks like Buddha) and is challeged by the evil one to play games of chance. To describe the game or give away much more would be terrible, but trust me to say that the suspense is intense. This book feels like a 1930s Hollywood movie and probably would make a great modern film if only the industry knew about it.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A CHANGE IN DIRECTION FOR A. MERRITT,
By s.ferber (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Seven Footprints to Satan (Mass Market Paperback)
Readers of Abraham Merritt's first four novels--"The Moon Pool," "The Metal Monster," "The Face in the Abyss" and "The Ship of Ishtar"--may feel a little surprised as they get into his fifth, "Seven Footprints to Satan." Whereas those earlier fantasy masterpieces featured exotic locales such as the Pacific islands, the Himalayas and Peru; extravagant purple prose, dense with hyperadjectival descriptions; and living light creatures, metallic sentient cubes, a lost semireptilian race and battling gods, "Footprints" takes place, for the most part, in good ol' New York City and its suburbs, and tells an almost realistic tale of kidnapping and crime in direct, almost blunt prose. Indeed, although "Footprints" first appeared in "Argosy" magazine in 1927, and in book form the following year, it almost reads as if it had come from the pages of one of the crime pulps, such as "Black Mask" or "Crack Detective Stories." In this fast-moving tale, we meet James Kirkham, an adventurer/explorer (and, with a name like that, future candidate for Star Fleet Academy!) who is kidnapped off the streets of downtown Manhattan by the minions of Satan, a crime lord/supervillain/evil genius. Kirkham is forced to play a game in Satan's lair, during which he is made to tread on seven glowing footprints, four of which are "fortunate" and three "unfortunate." Depending on the steps he lands on, he will either be killed, serve Satan for a year, be given a fantastic fortune, etc. I am not giving away too much by saying that Kirkham winds up a bond servant to Satan, and is compelled to commit various fantastic crimes while in his service. He is housed in Satan's mazelike chateau with dozens of others, and falls in love with a fellow prisoner, Eve. (I suppose having Kirkham's first name be "Adam" would have been forcing things a bit!)Grotesque in appearance, vast of intellect, profound lover of beauty, and sadistic in the extreme, Satan makes for one terrific character. With his strain of Chinese background, he is reminiscent of Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu, but also of the supervillains of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels. Indeed, for much of the novel, it is unclear whether Satan is or isn't the actual article; Old Scratch himself. The scenes in which he is present are quite riveting. Merritt keeps things barely on this side of reality; nothing that transpires in the book--the museum theft, the slaves kept in bondage by the mind-altering kehft drug, the worldwide criminal organization, the high-seas piracy--is beyond the realm of credibility. And, suiting style to story, Merritt, as I mentioned up top, writes in spare, wonderfully controlled, crime-pulp prose. Thus, we get a line such as "I shot from the floor, and ...drilled [him] through the head." The dropping of the aforementioned purple prose makes the book seem lean and streamlined; it really does move, and keeps the reader turning the pages. The finale of the book is thrilling in the extreme, and concludes most satisfactorily. I have read that "Footprints" was turned into a 1928 film starring Thelma Todd as Eve, but from the plot synopses on imdb.com, it would seem that this film is a very loose adaptation, at best. I'd love to see it one day, just for comparative purposes, but can't imagine it equalling the suspense and excitement of the book. "Footprints" may have been a change in direction for A. Merritt, but it still makes for marvelous entertainment.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best adventure story that I have ever read,
By
This review is from: Seven Footprints to Satan (Mass Market Paperback)
Simply put, this is the most exciting adventure story that I ever read. One of the other reviews said that it would make a good Indiana Jones movie and it definetly would. I wont go into the plot as the other reviews outlined it pretty well. I will only add that I had to track down this book several times as I lent it out and would never get it back as the lendee's lent it to someone else. Great escapist literature.
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