Customer Reviews

The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl (Bantam Spectra Book)

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

 

 

I really wanted to love this novel. I like Pratt's short fiction. I love the cover: the image, the title, and the tagline: "If primal evil wants California, it's going to have to go through her first. . . ." It looks like great fun, sort of H.P. Lovecraft by way of Aaron Allston's GALATEA IN 2-D, and has nice cover quote from another couple authors I like. But, while I didn't particularly dislike the book, I didn't find it all that interesting, either. It was rather dull and will, I suspect, be quickly forgotten. The characters were pleasant enough but not particularly captivating or memorable, and the story seemed too thin for its four hundred pages -- it probably would've made a better novella than full-length novel. The villain is disappointingly weak, and inconsistencies abound: in one scene, the villain's incidental touch hurts a character, while later he slaps that character with no ill effect. At one point several police officers are slaughtered, and then for the rest of the novel the police do . . . nothing. They just take it in hand. In one chapter a character interacts with another, and several chapters later seems to have no recollection of it. And too often our heroes get out of their trouble a little *too* easily and conveniently; there's rarely any sense of danger. This book is a reasonably well-written, reasonably amusing read, but it never achieves the energy or excitement that it promises. If you want to like it, you probably will. It's mildly enjoyable, but not particularly recommended.

About The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl I think I can say: "this is a very promising first novel, and well worth reading, but also quite clearly a first novel." This book is Urban Fantasy, despite not being set in Seattle or Minneapolis or Newford. That said, it has an original flavor: the fantastical elements have an Old West manifestation.

The protagonist is Marzi (short for Marzipan: hippie parents), night manager of a coffee shop in Santa Cruz called Genius Loci. Marzi is an artist, having dropped out of UC Santa Cruz after a nervous breakdown a couple years previously. She draws a fairly successful underground comic called The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, about a woman who travels to a fantasy Old West and confronts weird villains. Her best friend is Lindsay, a talented bisexual artist still at UCSC. Lindsay keeps trying to set her up with men, but Marzi is skittish just now, after the breakdown. Then a new young man moves in above the coffee shop. Jonathan is studying Garamond Ray, a modestly famous artist who painted the walls of the coffee shop before disappearing during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Lindsay pounces immediately, and perhaps surprisingly has a bit of success pushing Marzi at him.

But at the same time the very strange artist Beej seems to go completely nuts, and starts talking about the Earthquake god. And another couple of artists, Dennis and his ex-girlfriend Jane, act oddly too. In particular Jane seems suddenly to be made of mud, and she seems to want to kill Marzi. All this seems perhaps connected with a locked storeroom, entering which precipitated Marzi's breakdown a couple years previously. That storeroom has an unknown Garamond Ray mural ... which means Jonathan is very interested.

So: Jonathan wants to get into the storeroom. Marzi is afraid, and especially afraid to let anyone else in. Dennis and Jane and Beej are starting to act very strange indeed ... Of course, Marzi will go in, and find a door -- a door that leads inevitably to a version of the Old West that is all too much like her comic. In particular, it holds a chaotic "god" called the Outlaw, who desperately wants to escape back to the real world, and do what he does best: destroy. So when Jonathan lets his curiosity get the best of him (with a little help ...) things go pear-shaped.

And it's up to Marzi to confront her fears, and to learn how to confront the Outlaw in the appropriate manner. Which of course she does, though not without some personal and general cost.

My main problem here was an ending that seemed abrupt and just a bit pat. Yet at the same time several innocent people are killed -- but somehow we are spared emotional involvement with any of the killings -- the characters who die are essentially redshirts, and I felt this a distinct failing. I also felt that the characterization of the villains -- well, Dennis in particular -- was rather lazy. Dennis is a cliche, and not a very interesting cliche.

But as ever when I cite what's wrong with a book I feel I'm overstating things. (Well, not "as ever", but in this case anyway.) The novel is a very engaging read. The good guys, Marzi and Lindsay in particular, are very well portrayed. It's well-written, and the magical elements are well-imagined. It's a good book -- a good first novel, and certainly promising good things to come.

i wouldn't say "go out now and buy this book right now!!!", however, if you are looking for a good sci-fi/fantasy type of book, with a straight up plot that is pretty straight forward, this book is worth your time. the characters are interesting, not stereotypical, and are fleshed out enough so you know them but you are not overburdened with smothering details.

for me, the story moved a bit slow at first, and seemed thin and plodding in spots, but the book reads smoothly enough to where the short comings didn't kill the book completely.

i like the statement it makes (in my opinion, this is how i took it) about art and how artists see the world around them. i like how the author includes the santa cruz earthquake and the way he describes some of the scenes are just perfect.

the writing is good, not pretentious, and pretty smooth. the story is good, basic plot, pretty straight forward. worth it.

certainly, as the other reviewers state, there were obvious inconsistencies in the actions and reactions, and memories, but for me this is part of what made it work -- this was magic, without straight rules, and unpredictable. it was very funny and i enjoyed it without having to feel committed to it.

4.5

Marzi is a comic book artist working in a coffee shop trying to get her life back to normal after surviving what she thinks is a mental breakdown over the fear of opening doors. As she starts to remember why that fear started and as everyone starts acting really strange around her, Marzi begins to believe she might not be quite as crazy as she thought. Marzi/her alter ego Rangergirl (her comic book hero) may have to have a good old-fashioned, Western showdown with a supernatural evil older than life.

This is one of the most original ideas for a story that I've read. It mixes westerns, fantasy, sci-fi, the supernatural, comic books and more for a fun-filled read. The biggest problem I had was the ending was kind of anti-climactic, but that doesn't ruin the rest of the book.

I would love to see a comics series or graphic novel of the Rangergirl story that is part of this novel.

I don't know why this book only has a handful of reviews on Amazon and isn't more popular. Don't let this discourage you from reading it. It's a fun read and well worth it.

This is one of the best novels I've read concerning the manifestation of strange conscious, unconscious, and subconscious desires and fears. Much of the fantastic elements (medicine lands, oracles, gods) in this novel are directly influenced by the imaginations of the characters, a device I always find fascinating for its opportunity of analysis. In fact, one instance has a trio going directly into the psyche/soul of another, and Pratt is no slouch when it comes to thoughtful symbolism there.

On the other hand, you've got his usual quick wit and colorful ensemble. Each character is distinct, with their own personality and sometimes traumatic (without being whiny) past. Altogether, they're more neurotic and artistic than a random sample of Americans would be, but considering the story is set in Santa Cruz around artists and students who gravitate to a mural-covered coffee house, I think it comes naturally.

The plot starts off a little slower and clumsier than I'm used to with Pratt (again, first novel), but sharpens up once the ball gets rolling. I'll agree with another reviewer saying that there's a distinct lack of heart-thumping danger, until the climax, of course. The caveat of controlling your surroundings with your imagination and mind is that there aren't too many surprises or lack of loopholes, until something in the back of your head comes to bite you.

All in all, definitely worth reading. Pratt has proved himself enough to me that I buy his works without a second thought or even glance at the blurbs. (Also, fans of Stephen King's Duma Key may enjoy this for similar themes of artist vs. ancient evil and the unique ways they engage each other.)

To say that a book is a "promising first novel" is to use shorthand for: uneven, interesting, fun, forgivably flawed.

This is a promising first novel.

Which is to say that if Pratt's fifth book (or even third) doesn't fix some of the more glaring inconsistencies and enthusiastic sloppiness then I am not going to be interested in giving him any more chances. But there is still enough here for a fun read and for me to keep him in mind as an author to watch.

Think Jack Chalker arm-wrestling with Charles de Lint with KJ Bishop looking on with interest and you'll kind of get the flavor of the book. Notable elements include other worlds, urban fantasy markers, cool cultural references, and the desert/wild west.

Not at all bad.

Marzipan "Marzi" McCarty is the night manager at the coffeehouse Genius Loci, the place where famous artist Garmond Ray painted seven murals in seven different rooms before vanishing without a trace. Marzi thinks of her work at the coffeehouse as a job but her vocation is writing the comic strip Rangergirl, a heroine fighting Evil in the contemporary west.

Strange things start happening in and around the coffeehouse. A regular customer wants to free the earthquake god trapped in Genius Loci. Jane, another patron, wants to free the imprisoned "dark goddess of the earth godess. Jane is killed and her doppelganger, made of mud with extraordinary powers tries to kill Marzi. Jonathan who has come to study the muralist's work wants to see the Desert Room which Marzi has closed off. She has repressed memories of the Evil that is behind the closed door holding the mural and she has become the guardian charged with keeping the evil which manifests himself as the Outlaw, the evil sorcerer in her comic strip, from busting free and destroying Santa Crux and then the rest of California and maybe the world. The malevolent being who has opened his prison a millimeter has influenced people to try to free him but he hasn't factored in Marzi and her friends who try to stop him.

The setting in the real world is the modern day west but evil lives in a realm where the old west is given form in another plane but occupying identical space as Santa Cruz where the book takes place. This is a fantastic classic good vs. evil confrontation where both sides have powers in the final battle that will decide what happens to the rest of the planet. Dealing with the evil one has forced the heroine to repress those memories and only lets them out through her comic book. The spunky heroine will need everything she has and more to triumph against overwhelming odds.

Harriet Klausner