Run to the hills

 Eventually, I'm going to get the tag fixed on R. S. Belcher's always fun Golgotha series, but....

Let me start by saying The Ghost Dance Judgement is a bit different than the previous three volumes, mainly because its frame story is set in the modern era, which may or may not explain a few references that happen in March of 1872. We start with one of Deputy Jim Negry's (the one with the jade Eye of the Moon) arriving in the nearly abandoned ghost town of Golgotha and stopping to ask questions at the general store run by one of Malachi Bick's descendants. It's here we hear the tale of the Ghost Dance some 20 years prior to the more famous outbreak. 

We start with Izsua as a little girl dealing with the slaughter of her village by settlers. She winds up finding a cave to the underworld, where she learns secrets of the dead. (This is roughly 18 years prior to the main bulk of the story.) She's involved with Deputy Mutt's old nemesis, Snake Man, we find out later. Anyway, she's found a way to lead the dead back to fight the living, with the promise that they'll drive the settlers back to Europe.  

In the mean time, President Grant has sent General Caxton to Golgotha to take care of the "savages" raiding the area. Along with him comes Deputy Kat's old boss Pinkerton, who's back to wooing Deputy Kate, even if she is in love with Sheriff Jon Highfather. Porter Rockwell, Brigham Young's right hand man, is also in town to ostensibly help Mayor Pratt with the Indian problem, but also make sure that Pratt's role as the Mormon champion won't challenge Young's leadership of the Church. Pratt's dealing with his relationship with both James Ringo and Black Rowan, the local brothel owner. Rowan is trying to get Pratt to get a Mormon encampment to move to make way for a dogleg of the railroad, but Pratt has reasons for resisting this. 

And then we have Maude and Constance, who are the first to encounter the dead Indians in the desert. And find out the Sons of Typhon have come to Golgotha to find an avatar for the thing under Argent Mountain, here referred to as both Uktena and Typhon. That plot involves Augustus's baby, which may or may not have been conceived prior to his wife bringing him back from the dead. This winds up roping in Professor Mephisto, who helps sort out the mess under the mountain. 

By the end, which involves a few armies converging on Golgotha and a fight under the mountain, we have quite the fun experience, since there really aren't that many people in the book who qualify as moral and upstanding. I mean, yes, the residents of Golgotha are essentially good people, but the moral gray areas with everyone, including most of the villains are ample enough to swallow the desert. 

Again, Belcher gets points for his portrayal of Pratt, who's closeted relationship with Ringo rings with honesty and pathos. Really, this goes for all the folks in relationships in the book. He also gets points for making a reference towards the end to the black sheriff in Rock Ridge. 

This also provides another sterling example of something I've long suspected, since a certain entity named Coyote shows up in here about halfway through. I'm fairly convinced at this point that Coyote and his prose portrayals are all the same creature existing across several universes at a time, since regardless of who's writing him, he steals the scene and behaves in very specific manners. Here, he gets bonus points for breaking the narrative long enough to point out he hasn't really been talked to since book one. 

The only problem I had, which I never did go back to figure out if the page numbering reflects it or not, is that one of the chapters is printed twice, back to back. I read it again, to see if maybe there was a subtle difference, but no, pretty sure this was a print error.

Great book, though. I can't wait to see what happens next.

Clearing the board

 There was some concern that Jim Butcher was going to end his long running Dresden Files with his new Battle Ground, but by the end, it's more like a musical Rondo, bringing the story back to the beginning, only with some new accoutrements. 

We pick up where Peace Talks left off, in the deep hours of Midsummer Night, as Ethniu and the Formor begin rising from Lake Michigan to repeat what a certain cow did year ago to Chicago. Given the book more or less climaxes at dawn, that's roughly 400 pages of the war for Chicago, as members of the Unseelie Accords combine to battle a Titan bearing the Eye of Balor. (For the record, this has been a recurring artifact in a few fictions I've read since this started. I guess mythology only has so many artifacts to dig up to destroy everything with.) 

It seems appropriate that one of the pop culture quotes that pops up is from Ghostbusters, since some of the battle is similar to that sequel, wherein The Winter Knight manages to get a seething mass of Humanity to rise up under his banner to help take on a varied mix of bad guys, including the return of the Black Court of Vampires (which also has a shout out to the best book in the entire series, Dead Beat.) 

While with the number of major characters dying throughout this battle, it does seem like this could be the end, it does, like I said, wind up feeling much more like resetting everything to new paradigm closer to how this all started. We get a few new plot threads for him to build off of, like whom Marcone is allied with, the true nature of who set this big battle in motion, and Mab's designs on securing particular alliances, as well as some new ideas that could easily fill volumes of their own, like Mab's long lost humanity, The Winter Lady's relationship with her parents, and whether or not Butcher isn't trying to sell us an Anakin Skywalker story over 20+ books. 

As an added bonus, there is a short story set about 6 months after the main event at the end. That one made me laugh and cry in the course of about 10 pages, particularly the idea that Queen Mab watched Frozen at some point.

Given how long we were between books before this two in a year, I wouldn't be surprised if Butcher takes another sabbatical, since this one really didn't end on a cliffhanger. (Really, the only major pressing event is set for a year from the ending. Everything else is background noise.)

So, in the end, it's a fitting ending to a particular chapter of the Files, and an interesting rearranging of pieces for a new chapter.

Brotherly Love

 Before we actually try to review Silent Scream by Dan Schmidt, I feel we must discuss its existence before getting too deep. (This will become important again in about 3 books, since I picked up a book discussing the era this one got written in.) 

This one is out of the mid 90's, and bears the stamp of 90's horror mediocrity, Leisure Books, as the publishing imprint. Leisure Book, much like Zebra books, were commonly found with lurid covers over cheap paper, decorating supermarket book sections, enticing people into what may or may not be a memorable horror story. (Mostly not, although I do remember a few of them, and I imagine when we clean out Mom's attic eventually, I'll find even more.) 

Anyway, at it's heart, Silent Scream is a tale of two brothers, and why one hates the other. Mike, the younger brother, starts off a homeless addict currently roaming the streets of Philadelphia. Older brother John, has stayed in Glendale, Illinois, a farming community that's become a prosperous middle class urban utopia. John has a loving wife, 3 kids, owns and edits the town newspaper, and owns and runs a restaurant with the family. Mike runs into a former classmate who runs away screaming. Mike repeats a prayer he found in some obscure volume of self help literature. Mike finds a dead body with an amulet shaped like the symbol in his book. Mike puts it on, and wow, Mike can suddenly hear everyone's thoughts and start using his thoughts to control people around him! (Had this been 80's comedy instead of 90's horror, this would be a sex comedy.)

Anyway, back in Glendale, where Mike will eventually make his way back to, John is having issues of his own, including a letter from Mike that starts off the novel. We see the serene nature of John's life, and the occasional crack in that facade, what with drunk coworkers who want very badly to crack open the mafia connections that brought the money into Glendale. 

While John is potboiling his way through, Mike uses his new powers to start hitching rides west, starting with his old classmate. Mike's hearing a voice with his new powers, encouraging his revenge plans. 

Until the brothers finally meet up, we mostly get Mike getting revenge on people he feels wronged him and plotting against his brother's "perfect life" and John learning to be a more assertive person. And then they meet.

As far as readability, this is a decent read. I mean, Mike is a sympathetic antagonist, one whom you can empathize with to a point. John is not a great protagonist, as I found myself hating him throughout most of the story, and frankly, Mike does have reasonable grounds to hate him on. I mean, John did know the charges against Mike growing up were untrue, and he also knew the truth about other things that lead to Mike's victimization. And he said nothing. I'm sorry, keeping a trust fund of parental money doesn't excuse silence in the face of oppression of someone you supposedly love. 

On the other hand, Mike's actions with powers start losing logic of any kind when he goes after John's youngest, the one who most resembles the Mike as a youth. We never learn whether Mike's powers are inborn (it's mentioned that some of the side effects manifesting with the powers mirror illnesses Mike had growing up), or come from an external being, maybe a demon or a god of some kind. We get very vague hints about some of what Mike went through as a kid, but never enough to really flesh out some of what happened.... I felt like had this been written a bit later, Mike would have been revealed as being molested or even gay, but instead, we just know he was falsely accused or raping a girl, even if it never went to court. We know something happened in the bushes with another boy and his dad beat him half to death over whatever happened there. We also get more than a few scenes of the misogyny that tends to inhabit pulp horror, which does tend to make Mike quite a bit like the monster everyone thought he was as a teenager. And when we find out love and prayer are Mike's weakness, the ending takes on a vaguely moralistic stance that in no way redeems anyone while feeling tacked on to satisfy an editor. 

Honestly, I enjoyed it, although I felt like I was checking off boxes on the genre all the way through.

As you wish

 So, after more than a few years, I finally got around to reading William Goldman's The Princess Bride. 

Honestly, there isn't much to add here. Most folks have seen the movie by now, and laughed and been enchanted by it. The story in the book is pretty much the same, although instead of getting Columbo reading to Kevin, we instead get a bunch of self depreciation from the writer. (Not that some of it isn't amusing, particularly when he starts discussing Steven King....Note that I was reading the 30th Anniversary edition, which includes chapter 1 of the follow up.)

I checked around, and despite being listed as an abridged version of a bigger foreign work, this all belongs to a self depreciating author, who frankly doesn't come off well when talking about himself. 

On the other hand, it's hard not to love Westley and Buttercup, root for Fezzig and Inigo... (The book does go into somewhat greater detail on backstory, which the movie skipped over a bit. We actually find out how Buttercup wound up engaged to Humperdink, for instance, and Miracle Max and his wife have more fleshed out roles, even if it's impossible to read their section without hearing Carol Kane and Billy Crystal speaking.) 

And the actual ending is a bit different, which annoyed me. I think he fixed a few things in the screenplay, even as he messed up other things. But hey. It's a charming read, and easy to forgive for minor problems.

The desert never lies

 So, finally circled back to finish Mercedes Lackey's Dragon Jousters with Aerie, which I know I read at some point, but honestly didn't remember anything about.

And frankly, given how scattershot the plot is at points, that isn't a big surprise. 

Kiron and Aket-ten are having separation missions throughout, as she's stationed in Mephis and trying to raise a female only wing of dragon jousters and Kiron is at the newly discovered city of Aerie trying to find ways to keep the Jousters active. 

Eventually, among all the relationship drama, Kiron discovers a plot that leads back to the long ago vanished Nameless Ones, which ends up getting Aket-ten and him going to the Two kingdom border with the Chosen of Seft. 

And eventually, Altia gets attacked by the tribe of the East with their Goddess of Vengeance, Tamat. 

Oh yeah, and a subplot about one of Aket-ten's trainees finding Kiron's mother. 

Despite my quibble about the plot being scattershot, there is actually a very interesting argument in here about the relationship between Gods and Humans, and how both end up influencing the other. That made the latter half much more interesting.