Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
All Fun!, June 26, 2006
From start to finish, this anthology is packed with fun!
The various Authors seem to be having a blast playing around with these classic French Heroes and Anti-Heroes, and that fun moves right from the authors to the readers!
Some of the stories will make you laugh out loud and others will make the hair on the nape of your neck stand up with fear!
Fans of Philip Jose' Farmer's Wold Newton theory will drool over every story in this book!
I know I do!!!!!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Shadowmen are back!, June 29, 2007
TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN: GENTLEMEN OF THE NIGHT is a terrific follow up to last year's Volume 1. It continues in the tradition of combining the pulp heroes and villains from both English and French pulp fiction. It is a fun look at some wonderful characters who most American readers don't know, but should.
"Trauma" by Bill Cunningham offers a very unexpected combination of characters that works beautifully in this flash fiction piece. Bill takes an incident from the career of Fantomas, the sadistic French master villain, and shows us the unintended consequences for a young eyewitness.
"The Eye of Oran" is the follow up to Win Eckert's "The Vanishing Devil" which appeared in vol 1. The hero (a Doc Savage type named Francis Ardan) and villain (the Fu Manchu-esque Natas) return but the action in this story centers on a pair of heroines. The ladies are original characters but are related to two of the most famous figures in mystery/thriller stories ever. The setting is taken from Camus' THE PLAGUE. This is a fast moving adventure filled with surprises and many, many wonderful references to other fictional characters.
"The Werewolf of Rutherford Grange" by Greg Gick completes this story which began in Vol 1. This is well worth waiting for! "Werewolf" succeeds as both spooky story and clever mystery. The characters are well realized and the period `feel' is great. Though it's one of the longer stories the action moves it along so briskly you don't mind a bit.
"Dr. Cerral's Patient" by Rick Lai is an intricately plotted mystery packed with details and references, every one of which is essential to the story. It's not exactly a sequel to his story from Vol 1 but the connections between the two are many and complex. I've read it three times so far and am appreciating new details each time.
Fernando Calvi contributes a number of wonderful character portraits to the volume. My personal favorites are the naive-looking Roulettabille and the sinister Judex but all of them instantly tell you a wealth about the characters.
"Mystery of the Yellow Renault" by Serge Lehman is a hilarious flash fiction story about good deductive reasoning gone bad.
"The Melons of Trafalmadore" also by Serge Lehman is an odd pairing of Dr. Omega (a French character similar to Dr. Who) and the slow-witted Hoppy Uinatz (from the Saint stories) on a planet created by Kurt Vonnegutt Jr. It's very short but packs a brutally funny finish.
"Arsene Lupin's Christmas" by Jean Marc Lofficier is another flash fiction piece that gives us a nice glimpse of the gentleman burglar's chivalrous side.
"Figaro's Children" by Jean Marc Lofficier is one of my favorite story in the collection. It is an untold tale of the Paris Opera House which captures both the terrifying and tender sides of the famous Phantom of the Opera.
"The Tarot of Fantomas" by Lofficier is a fantastic introduction to the Fantomas, the French villain known as the "Lord of Evil." This is less than a page long and still gave me the chills.
"The Star Prince" by Lofficier is one of the most unexpected combinations of characters as Doc Ardan meets Saint-Exupéry's Little Ptrince. This is my personal favorite of the flash stories. It captures just the right tone, gentle and poignant.
"Marguerite" by Jean Marc Lofficier is a nice glimpse of the most intriguing part of the Nyctalope's career. During the 1940's one story actually had the French hero allied with the Vichy government, which was a puppet for the Nazis. It manages to say a lot about the struggles in the character's soul with very few words.
"Lost and Found" by Lofficier finished the flash stories by involving the mysterious Judex in one of the greatest treasure-chase stories of all time. The combination works very well.
"Be Seeing You" by Xavier Maumejean shows us an early version of the Village (from the cult TV series "The Prisoner.") Xavier has a wonderful sense of irony and puts some familiar characters through some very unfamiliar paces to good effect. His version of the origin of the Village is funny, especially with throwaway lines like, "What a preposterous label! Why not 'Thursday?'") and the steampunk version of the rover.
"The Vanishing Diamonds" by Sylvie Miller & Philippe Ward uses several of H.G. Wells' characters to resolve a loose plot thread from THE THREE MUSKETEERS. The Time Traveler uses his machine to travel back to solve the mystery of the Queen's diamonds.
"A Jest to Pass the Time" by Jess Nevins is endlessly inventive and packed full of wonderful characters. This is a great deal of fun built on the 'what if' premise of all the great thieves of literature trying to steal the same treasure. The conclusion is especially fitting.
"Angels of Music" - I couldn't stop laughing when I realized what Kim Newman was doing. I never liked the original 'angels' nearly this much. When does the TV series come out? :-)
"The Incomplete Assassin" - A clever short mystery with a very good use of the historical setting. It uses an (undeservedly) obscure Jules Verne character named Strogoff and French detective Rouletabille.
"Annus Mirablus" by Chris Roberson is a story that explains a lot about the differences between science fiction in the golden age and today. It turns out that the laws of physics were different back then, and Chris gives us the wonderful team of Dr. Omega and Albert Einstein to find out how this can be and set things right.
"Legacies" by Jean-Louis Trudel is a fun and surprising Arsene Lupin story with some very interesting people in small roles. I'm not familiar with Lady Wyndham but am very interested after reading this. A very nicely crafted caper story!
"The Grey Men" by Brian Stableford rounds out the volume. I was wondering about getting JOHN DEVIL and this story makes up my mind. Brian Stableford was an amazing sense of place and time, and his combination of the worlds of Paul Feval and Mary Shelley is ingenious. In this story the Black Coats criminal conspiracy is complicated by some mysterious attempts to raise the dead. (Of course, if the dead are raised, who is going to stand up for their rights?) I'm eager to see the next installment.
I know it sounds like I'm gushing, but there isn't a dog in the lot. This is a wonderful collection! I notice that Arsene Lupin is used in quite a few of the stories here. I wonder why? Is it that he represents French popular culture so well? Is it because there are so many different aspects of the character to play with? Is it simply because he is a lot of fun? I don't know, but I'm not complaining. I'll enjoy seeing Lupin and his compatriots return, hopefully in many volumes to come.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Astonishing!, August 18, 2006
Wold-Newtonry is a dangerous territory where even angels even bother to tread cautiously, lest any careless footwork results in a butterfly effect killing one or more of our beloved heroes (& villains).But this anthology is astonishing in the sense that not only did the authors preserve the consistency of the Wold-Newton universe, they also managed to convey themselves through proper pulp-fiction. I am looking forward towards the Volume III. Enjoy this book.
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by Jean-Marc Lofficier
by Jean-Marc Lofficier
by Jean-Marc Lofficier
by Jean-Marc Lofficier
by Xavier Maumejean
